THE MAGDALEN: AH EXPLORATION OF
THE SHAPING 0F MYTHS AROUND
THE MARY MAGDALENE OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT CANONICAL GOSPELS AND
AN EXAMINATION OF THE EFFECTS OF
THE MYTHS ON THE LITERARY FIGURE,
PARTICULARLY ON THE HEROINE OF
THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY DIGBY PLAY
MARY MAGDALENE

Thesis for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
MARJORIE M. MALVERN
1969

   
     

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The Magdalen: an Exploration of the Shaping of Myths
Around the Mary Magdalene of the New Testament Canonical
Gospels and an Examination of the Effects of the Myths
on the Literary Figure, Particularly on the Heroine of
the Fifteenth-century Digby Play Mary Magdalene

presented by

 

Marjorie M. Malvern

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ABSTRACT
THE MAGDALEN: AN EXPLORATION OF THE SHAPING OF MYTHS AROUND
THE MARY MAGDALENE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANONICAL GOSPELS
AND AN EXAMINATION OF THE EFFECTS OF THE MYTHS ON THE

LITERARY FIGURE, PARTICULARLY ON THE HEROINE OF THE
FIFTEENTH-CENTURY DIGBY PLAY MARY MAGDALENE

BY

Marjorie M. Malvern

The major purpose of this study of the Magdalen is to
deepen understanding of a figure who has appealed to man-
kind's imagination for some two thousand years. To try to
fulfill its major purpose, the study explores the shaping of
myths around the Mary Magdalene sketched in the New Testament
canonical gospels and examines the effects of the myths on
the literary figure, particularly on the heroine of the
fifteenth-century Digby play Mareragdalene.

The Introduction emphasizes the Magdalen's pOpular
appeal as it is exemplified in varied monuments to her
memory. Chapter I traces the heroine of the Digby Mary_
Magdalene through the scenes of the play and raises questions
concerning both the reasons for the Magdalen's reaching the
stature of a heroine in the medieval play and the possible

sources for the complex literary figure.

Marjorie M. Malvern

Chapter II views the Magdalen pictured in the New
Testament canonical gospels and finds her role in the Gospel
of John archetypal, suggestive of the antique earth—goddess,
whatever her name, lamenting the death of the heaven-god and
rejoicing in finding him resurrected. That the archetypal
character of the Magdalen's role in the Gospel of John is,
in large part, responsible for the identification of the
Magdalen with other figures in the New Testament is set up
as a hypothesis for examining the other canonical gosPel
figures with whom the Magdalen is early identified. It is
observed that the identification of the Magdalen with other
figures makes her at once a more complex figure and a
figure closer to the Christ than is the woman specifically
referred to in the New Testament as Mary Magdalene.

Chapter III examines the Magdalen's place in apocryphal
writings, especially in the Gospel of Mary and the Pistis
Soghia, and gives further evidence of attempts both to iso-
late the Magdalen as the feminine figure closest to the
Christ and to incorporate into her person attributes of
antique goddesses, who embody the paradoxical archetypal
feminine. She is seen as both a goddess of wisdom and of
love.

Chapter IV treats the attributes given the Magdalen
through writings of Hippolytus and Origen; the Magdalen
becomes a "second Eve" as well as the Christ's "soror mea

Sponsa," the Bride of the Song of Songs. The archetypal

Marjorie M. Malvern

character of the Song of Songs and the importance of
Origen's mystical interpretation of the Song in the creation
of the prototype for the medieval figure of the mythical
Magdalen are emphasized.

Chapter V exemplifies the fulfillment of the prototype
of the Magdalen during the complex Middle Ages by pointing
out the importance given Mary Magdalene in the liturgy of
the Roman Catholic Church and in pOpular tradition from the
time of the Crusades into the later Middle Ages.

Chapter VI illustrates the expansion of the Magdalen's
role in plays and in iconography selected from the twelfth,
thirteenth, and fifteenth centuries, in which attributes
similar to those given the Magdalen during the early cen-
turies of Christianity are again discernible.

The study's theme, reiterated in the Conclusion, is
that the Magdalen became an important literary figure because
she was chosen by homo ludens during the early Christian
period as a vessel for ideas too tenacious and too profound
to be destroyed. The Magdalen became, and remains in
Western literature of the twentieth century, the study con-
cludes, a vessel for the paradoxical ideas of the archetypal

feminine.

THE MAGDALEN: AN EXPLORATION OF THE SHAPING OF MYTHS AROUND
THE MARY MAGDALENE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANONICAL GOSPELS
AND AN EXAMINATION OF THE EFFECTS OF THE MYTHS ON THE
LITERARY FIGURE, PARTICULARLY ON THE HEROINE OF THE

FIFTEENTH-CENTURY DIGBY PLAY MARY MAGDALENE

BY

. . \NL
Marjorie MA Malvern

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1969

PREFACE

From the search for answers to questions excited in
my mind by Professor Arnold Williams' course in medieval
drama came this study of the Magdalen. The study explores
the shaping of myths around the Mary Magdalene of the
New Testament canonical gospels and examines the effects
of the myths on the literary figure, particularly on the

heroine of the fifteenth-century Digby Mary Magdalene.

 

By viewing the Magdalen as she appears in early writings
that give evidence of the nature of myths attached to the
New Testament figure, I hope to deepen understanding of
both the creation of the literary figure and the signifi-
cance of the heroine of the Digby play.

During the five years of investigation distilled in
this brief study of the Magdalen, I have, of course, become
indebted to a number of people. I shall not here express
my thanks to those who have indirectly helped me. I do,
however, wish to exPress my gratitude to those who have
most directly helped me complete the study which follows:

To Professor Arnold Williams not only for his stimu-

lating course that excited the Magdalen questions in my

ii

mind and for his wise counsel, whether or not he was on
leave from Michigan State University, as chairman of my
guidance committee, but also for his thoughtful reading of,
and suggesting improvements for, the Magdalen study when he
had more important things to think about.

To Professor John Yunck both for serving on my
guidance committee and for, some years ago, quickening my
interest in the Middle Ages through his course on Chaucer.

To Professor Joseph Summers for serving on my guidance
committee, for not only suggesting that I read E. H.
Gombrich's Art and Illusion but also for lending me his
copy of the work, and for listening to my effusions about
the Magdalen even before he became a member of my guidance
committee.

To the staffs of libraries at the University of
Michigan, the University of California at Los Angeles,
Stanford University, the Bibliotheque Nationale, and
Michigan State University, with particular thanks to the
Inter-library Loan staff at Michigan State University.

To Marcia Maureen Sullivan for reading the manuscript
and for expressing recognition of parallels between the

Digby play Mareragdalene and the Theatre of the Absurd.

 

And to Larry Malvern, Professor in the Engineering

College at Michigan State University, for going beyond the

iii

bounds of duty in reading the manuscript and, most especial-
ly, for cheering me through the maudlin times and for

sharing with me the joyous times.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER Page
PREFACE O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 0 ii
INTRODUCTION: THE MYTHICAL MAGDALEN AND

VARIED MONUMENTS TO HER MEMORY. . . . . . .1
I. THE HEROINE OF THE DIGBY MARY MAGDALENE, . . . 11

 

II. ,MARY MAGDALENE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANONICAL
GOSPELS AND OTHER NEW TESTAMENT FIGURES
WITH WHOM SHE IS IDENTIFIED . . . . . . . 57

III. THE MAGDALEN IN APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS. . . . . . 55

IV. ATTRIBUTES OF THE MAGDALEN DERIVED FROM
WRITINGS OF HIPPOLYTUS AND ORIGEN . . . . 85

V. FULFILLMENT OF THE PROTOTYPE OF THE MAGDALEN
IN TIE MIDDLE AGES 0 O C . O O O C O O O O 102

VI. EXPANSION OF THE MEDIEVAL FIGURE OF THE
MAGDALEN IN SELECTED PLAYS AND ICONOG-
MPIH O O C C C O O O O O O O O O I O O O 119

CONCLUSION: THE MAGDALEN: A VESSEL FOR THE
ARCHETYPAL FEMININE IN WESTERN LITERATURE 148

LITERATURE CITED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

INTRODUCTION

THE MYTHICAL MAGDALEN AND VARIED MONUMENTS
TO HER MEMORY

The Magdalen, a mythical figure shaped around the
Mary Magdalene who is briefly sketched in the New Testament
canonical gospels, has figured in imaginations for some two
thousand years. Her popular appeal through the centuries
of the Christian era manifests itself in the numerous and
varied monuments to her memory.

Not only do many churches bear the name of the Magdalen,
but colleges, hospitals, benevolent societies for reformed
prostitutes, city streets, and women of many countries have
been named for her. In the Tyrol, as Louis Réau points out
in his Iconographie de l'art chrétien (II, 849), children

1 We recall

born out of wedlock were also given her name.
that Chaucer's shipman's "barge ycleped was the Maudelayne."
And Réau mentions that in the seventeenth century a small
French cake, still pOpular today, took her name (II, 849).

White roses are in Germany called "Magdalenrosen" (Réau, II,

847). A vineyard at Lyon was named for her before the end

 

lLouis Réau, Iconographie de l'art chrétien (Paris;
1955-1957), Volls. I and II—-hereafter referred to as Reau.

of the twelfth century, as Victor Saxer notes in Le Culte
de Marie Madeleine en Occident (p. 247).2 A white peach
also bears her name, as the Oxford English Dictionary
states (1955 edition, VI, ii, 25) and illustrates with a
quotation from a 1706 issue of the Retir'd Gardn'r:

"The white Magdalen has a sugar'd winy taste...."

The Magdalen is, in fact, the patron saint of gardeners,
and of "winegrowers," as well as of pharmacists, glove-
makers, perfume manufacturers, hair-dressers, podiatrists,
comb-makers, foundrymen, tawers, barrel-makers, and weavers.3
And she was in the Middle Ages, as Chaucer well knew, a

"protector of sailors."4

She was especially honored by
medieval religious orders of reformed prostitutes, and
prisoners had access to her intercession (Réau, II, 849).
She is indirectly responsible for the invention in
France of a local saint, Saint Rabony, who, good wives
believed, had the faculty to improve ("rabbonir": as to

improve wine) bad husbands. Saint Rabony, Réau reports

(I, 525), originated from an inscription on a phylactery

 

2Victor Saxer, Le Culte de Marie Madeleine en Occident,
des origines a la fin du moyen Sge (Paris, 1959)--hereafter
referred to as Le Culte.

3The Magdalen's patronages are listed, for example, in
Johannes H. Emminghaus, Mary Magdalene, Vol. 5 of The Saints
in Legend and Art (Recklinghausen, W. Germany, 1964), text
of story and legend by Leonhard Kfippers, trans. from German
by Hans Herman Rosenwald, p. 1.

4Emminghaus, Mary Magdalene, p. 12.

 

which emphasizes the Magdalen's recognition of the resur-
rected Christ, as told in the Gospel of John 20: 16, with
the word "Rabboni" coming from her mouth.

The Magdalen also has the honor, a dubious honor to
be sure, of contributing to the English language the word
"maudlin." Her name becomes, by the seventeenth century,
synonymous with an overly sentimental weeper, particularly
a tearful drunk who is "maudlin—cupped," and who "maudlinly
maudlinizes" and mouths ”maudlinisms."5

The numerous and varied iconographic monuments to the
Magdalen manifest her appeal to artists as different from
each other as Giotto and Rouault or as Donatello and
Marochetti. And literary monuments to the Magdalen extend
from at least the second century of the Christian era into
the twentieth century.

Myths that grew up around the Mary Magdalene of the
New Testament canonical gospels during the early centuries
of Christianity cling to the Magdalen who figures not only
in medieval literature but also in twentieth-century
literature. Linking the Magdalen of the second-century
Pistis Sophia with the Magdalen who appears in twentieth-
century works, such as, for example, Niko! Kazantzakis'

novels The Last Temptation of Christ and The Greek Passion,

 

 

sSee Oxford English Dictionary (VI, ii, 247) for
examples from literature.

 

is the heroine of the fifteenth—century Digby play Mggy
Magdalene.

Since the heroine of the Digby play embodies more of
the myths shaped around the Mary Magdalene sketched in the
New Testament than does any other literary figure, I focus
this study on the Magdalen of the Digby play. And since
the myths that were early attached to the New Testament
figure have not, so far as I have been able to discover,
been thoroughly treated, I closely examine apocryphal and
homiletic writings of the early Christian period, writings
which gave evidence of both the significance of the myths
and the probable reasons for the myths having been attached
specifically to the Magdalen.

The literary figure of the Magdalen has been the sub-
ject of several recent studies. Her role in medieval drama
has been treated by Friedrich Otto Knoll in Die Rolle der
Maria Magdelena in geistlichen Spiel des Mittelalters
(Berlin and Leipzig, 1954) and by Sister Mary John of Carmel
Chauvin in The Role of Mary Magdalene in Medieval Drama
(Washington, D. C., 1951). Sister Chauvin sees the Magdalen
of Western drama in three stages: as a "sinner," as a
"disciple," as a "saint." She stresses the didactic and
symbolic purposes of the Magdalen's roles and classifies the
heroine of the Digby play as a type of Christian
"Everywoman."

Knoll, in his brief study of sources for the Magdalen

scenes in the drama, finds the worldly scenes based on the

life of the times and places in which the plays were written
and performed, and he sees the sources for the Magdalen's
role as a "sinner" in the New Testament figure and in
parallels with other New Testament figures who were con-
verted sinners, such as Paul and Peter.

Although not specifically devoted to the Magdalen, two
other recent studies include discussions of her role in the

drama. Eleanor Prosser, in her Drama and Religion in the

 

English Mystery Plays (Stanford, Calif., 1961), emphasizes
the Magdalen's role as a Christian penitent. Gustave Cohen,

in his Etudes d'histoire du theatre en France au mgyen-Sge

 

et a la renaissance (Paris, 1956), reflects appreciation for

 

the full, complex character of the Magdalen in French drama
in an essay (Chapter VII) devoted to her, but the figure
outside the French drama is, of course, not within the scope
of Cohen's studies.

Helen Meredith Garth, in "Saint Mary Magdalene in
Medieval Literature," published in Johns Hopkins University
Studies in Historical and Political Science (Baltimore,
Maryland, 1950). Vol. 67, pp. 547-452, emphasizes, as does
Professor Prosser, the Magdalen's role as a penitent.
Although the Magdalen's role as a Christian penitent is an
important one, it results from one of the attributes given
the figure by early Church Fathers after she had been given
the attribute of a prostitute, and it is only one aspect of

a complex literary figure.

W. Oster-Fenton points out the importance of the

Magdalen in medieval lyrics in his study Maria Magdalena in

 

der Lyrics des Mittelalters (Dfisseldorf, 1966). And Gerhard
John Reimer's unpublished Master's Thesis "Maria Magdalena

in Werken von Hebbel, Heyse, Schlaf, und Thoma" (Michigan
State University, 1965) exemplifies the continuing importance
of the Magdalen in late nineteenth- and early twentieth—
century German literature where the Magdalen figures as
various types of the whore.

Since I have not seen any study which suggests to me
satisfactory reasons for the Magdalen's becoming a long-lived
mythical figure, I go back to the non-orthodox as well as
orthodox writings of the early Christian period to try to
see the Magdalen myth taking shape. Obviously I do not see,
as does an anonymous author of an article published on the
religious page'of The State Journal (Lansing, Michigan) on
August 28, 1965, the myth as "libel."

The article, headed Mary_Maggalene Victim of Libel and

 

superscribed in smaller type Her Gospel Role Important,
begins: "July 22 each year is dedicated to the most libeled
woman in Christian history. Her name is Mary Magdalene.
Solely because of a mistake in identification, she has been
Spoken of for centuries as a fallen woman." The article
eXplains the "libel" as a result of "juxtaposition" of Luke's
mention of the Magdalen with his story of the prostitute

who washed Jesus' feet and dried them with her hair and of

the transferring to the Magdalen of the "unsavory reputation

of her home town, a notoriously licentious fishing village,"
as well as of the interpretation of the seven demons, which
Jesus had cast out of her, as "demons of unchastity“ rather
than a "serious mental illness."

The article suggests that Mary Magdalene's gospel role
is important enough without "embellishing it with sentimental
nonsense about her 'past'" and summarizes her gospel role.
As one of the women who performed the "kind of humble but
essential service which millions of Christian women still
perform in the church," she is, the article states, "patron
saint of all women of all ages who have helped finance the
mission of the church through bazaars and bake sales." And
she was the "first Christian to have the privilege of pro-
claiming to others the glad tidings which constitutes the
heart of the gOSpel."

The same view, with identical explanation for the
"libel," is expressed by Edith Deen in All the Women of the
Bible (New York, 1955; pp. 200-205). It is not an uncommon
view, but that the explanation is newsworthy indicates the
continued popularity of the controversial mythical Magdalen.

However accurate this twentieth-century newspaper
article's picture of the Magdalen as the good Christian
woman who does the "humble but essential service" for the
'church may be, the figure here represented would certainly
never have reached the stature of heroine in the fifteenth—

century Digby play.

The Magdalen‘s gospel role is, as the article suggests,
indeed impprtant. And I suggest that its archetypal element
of the woman lamenting the dead God and rejoicing in finding
him resurrected may account in large part for the myths which
grew up around the Magdalen and gave her significance and
popular appeal beyond the gOSpel model.

I agree with Denis de Rougemont when he says in Love in
the Western World: "No myth arises so long as it is possible
to keep to the obvious and to express the obvious openly and
directly. On the contrary, a myth arises whenever it becomes
dangerous or impossible to Speak plainly about certain social
or religious matters, or affective relations, and yet there
is a desire to preserve these or else it is impossible to
destroy them."6

I do, however, see in myth's arising an element which
de Rougemont apparently does not see. That is the play
element. Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens describes this
characteristic of myth: “In myth, primitive man seeks to
account for the world of phenomena by grounding it in the
Divine. In all the wild imaginings of mythology a fanciful
spirit is playing on the border-line between jest and

earnest."7

 

6Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, trans.
by Montgomery Belgion (New York, revised and augmented
edition, 1957), p. 8. ‘

7Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludenspia study of the play
element in culture (First published in German, 1944; English
edition, Boston, 1962), p. 5.

Homo ludens works on the borderline between jest and

-——..'

 

earnest in the eclectic shaping of the Magdalen myth around
the figure found in the New Testament canonical gospels as
he attempts to fulfill a desire to preserve both antique
figures dangerous to Christianity and "affective relations"
frowned upon by Judeo-Christianity.

The major purposes of this study are, then, to examine
myths shaped around the Mary Magdalene of the New Testament
canonical gospels in the creation of the Magdalen and to
observe the effects of the myths on the literary figure,
particularly on the heroine of the Digby play Mary Magdalene.

After following the Magdalen through the scenes of the
long Digby play, we go back to View the Mary Magdalene of
the New Testament canonical gospels and the other New
Testament figures with whom she is early identified. As we
examine the Magdalen's place in early apocryphal and homi-
letic writings we discover the prototype for the literary
figure of the Magdalen. We return to the Middle Ages to view
the fulfillment of the prototype, particularly in the
heroine of the Digby play.

Beneath the major purposes of the study lurks a desire
to enrich appreciation for the significance of a literary
figure whose very name is used by such writers as James
Joyce, Gfinter Grass, John Barth, and Saul Bellow to connote
differing attributes of that paradoxical complexity called

the archetypal feminine.

10

yff Ony thyng Amyss be,

blame connyng, and nat me:

I desyer the redars to be my frynd,

yff ther be ony amysse, that to amend.
--Epilogue to the Digby

Mary Magdalene.

CHAPTER I

THE HEROINE OF THE DIGBY MARY MAGDALENE

While the Magdalen appears in the earliest extant
recorded Christian drama of the Western world, she does
not appear as a woman who has experienced a life of her
own. In the earliest plays, the tenth-century Quem guaeritis
plays, which dramatize only the scene central to Christianity,
we see the Magdalen for just a moment as she, with the other
Mary or Marys, goes to the sepulchre seeking Christ and,
finding the tomb empty, is told by an angel that Christ has
arisen. In the fifteenth-century Digby play, however, we see
her whole long complex life dramatized; we see her as a many-
sided figure living and dying in time.

Although time is telescoped in the Digby play, both the
length and the complexity of the Magdalen's life are implicit
in the varied scenes devoted to her. Scenes switching from
her castle to a tavern show her first as a devoted daughter
of Cyrus and a gracious sister of Martha and Lazarus, and
then as a beautiful woman delighting in fine wines and in
her "gallant" lover. A scene showing her in an arbor,

amongst "balms precious of price" as she waits for one of

11

12

her many worldly "valentynes" to appear is set in sharp
contrast with the scene in which she goes to anoint Christ
with "precious balms" and to become Christ's devoted follower
and "lover."

Derived from the Quem guaeritis plays is the scene in
which the Magdalen, with the other Marys, goes to the tomb
seeking Christ, but differing from the early plays is the
scene in which the risen Christ appears in the garden to the
Magdalen alone. And contrasting with the Magdalen's waiting
for her "blossom of bliss" in an arbor is the Magdalen's
search for the Christ in the garden. The Magdalen of the
Digby play is, then, not only more complex than the Magdalen
of the ngm quaeritis plays, but she is also shown in a much
closer relationship with the Christ than is the Magdalen of
the early plays.

Scenes moving from Jesus in heaven to the Magdalen on
earth reveal the shared devotion of the Christ and his
"beloved friend," whom he sends to Marseilles as "an holy
apostylesse" and whom he protects through the last thirty
years of her life as a hermit. And scenes showing the
Magdalen's role in Marseilles reveal in the "holy apostylesse"
attributes of an ancient goddess.

As we follow the Magdalen through the scenes of the
Digby play, we fully realize that the fifteenth-century
literary figure embodies traditions not used by the tenth-

century playwrights. We see too that, as Arnold Williams

13

points out in The Drama of Medieval England, the play itself

 

"contains nearly every element of technique available to

the late fifteenth-century dramatist. Some scenes go back
to the liturgical Easter play, some are developed on the
pattern of the craft cycles, some parallel the moralities."8
We also become aware that the Digby playwright, with his
eclectic imagination, is indeed homo ludens working on the
borderline between jest and earnest.

The Digby playwright moves from slapstick to high
solemnity. He mingles personified figures of the World, the
Flesh, the Devil, and their cohorts, the seven deadly sins,
with Biblical figures; he parodies the Roman Catholic mass
and the worship of relics in a service dedicated to "Mahound."
He has the king of Marseilles, in a tribute to the Magdalen,
echo words used by the Magdalen in praise of Jesus; he shows
the Magdalen as the feminine counterpart of the Christ.

In the Digby Mary Magdalene, we first see the Magdalen

9 Cyrus is boasting

with her family in the castle of Maudlin.
of his great wealth as he deeds his property to his children.
To his daughter Mary, “ful fayr and ful of femynyte" (1. 71),

he gives the castle of Maudlin. To Lazarus he gives

 

8Arnold‘Williams, The Drama of Medieval England
(East Lansing, Michigan, 1961), pp. 164-165.

9Mary Magdalene, published in the Digby Mysteries,
edited by F. J. Furnivall for the New Shakespeare Society in
1882 and published for the Early English Text Society, Extra
Series LXX, London, 1896, and reprinted in 1950, pp. 55-156.

 

14

Jerusalem, and to Martha, Bethany (11. 79-84). The children
thank Cyrus, and the Magdalen says that to her comfort this
place of "plesavns," fit for the daughter of a king, will
preserve her from worldly labors (11. 97-100).
The scene switches to Herod, then to Pilate, before
we see Cyrus blessing his children as he dies. Each of the
children laments the death of Cyrus, but the Magdalen, in
contrast with Martha and Lazarus, does not eXpress her private
grief. Instead, she asks God to be Cyrus's help and to bring
the three of them out of their "dolor," for God is, she says,
"most mytyest governour,/ from soroyng vs to restryne"
(11. 289-290). The children fulfill their father's will,
and Martha says that she and Mary will respect Lazarus as
their "hed and governour" (1. 500), while the Magdalen
welcomes her brother and sister to her castle (11. 505—304).
Juxtaposed with the picture of the Magdalen as a
virtuous daughter, grateful to her father for his gifts that
will preserve her from worldly labors, is the next scene
showing the Magdalen as a prostitute delighting in her worldly
companions. With the change in mood the play becomes a
Morality. The temptations of the Magdalen, like those of
Mankind in The Castle of Perseverence, a Morality contemporary
with the Digby Magy Magdalene, are flesh-and-blood figures.
The Castle of Maudlin is, like the Castle of Perseverance,
besieged by the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Magdalen, like

Mankind, is moved to repentance by warnings from a Good Angel.

. III II [Fl [III II II III I
ll ll Ill II III! I III I ll

15

The Digby playwright, as’Sister Mary John of Carmel Chauvin
suggests in The Role of Mary Magdalene in Medieval Drama
(p. 195), dramatizes the Magdalen's fall and repentance
through the techniques of the Morality.

We see the World, the Flesh and his wife Lechery, the
Devil, and their cohorts Wealth, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, and
Sensuality, in council to plot the seduction of the
Magdalen. World says, "yf she in vertu may dwelle," she
will be able to destroy hell (11. 419-420). Flesh sends his
lady Lechery to attend the Magdalen, "beral of bewte," and
Satan sends spirits malign to enter into the Magdalen so
that hell may win her (11. 425-455).

The Seven Deadly Sins besiege the castle of Maudlin and
then agree to go to Jerusalem, while Lechery and the Bad
Angel enter the castle to greet the Magdalen. Lechery, using
the old trick of flattery, compares the Magdalen's "bemys of
bewte" with the sun's rays and calls her most "debonarius"
with her angelic delicacy (11. 440-444). The Magdalen,
taken in by Lechery's praise, welcomes her whose "tong is
so amabyll devyded with reson" and tells Lechery of her grief
for her father's death (11. 451-455). Lechery tells her to
be of good "comfort" and says, "prynt you in sportes whych
best doth yow ples" (11. 456-459). Mary leaves her castle
in the governance of Lazarus and Martha, commends her brother
and sister to God, and departs with Lechery for Jerusalem.

The scene switches to a tavern. The Magdalen and

Lechery are greeted by the taverner, "wytty and wyse," who

16

bears the prize, he says, of all taverners in Jerusalem.

He extols his wines, obviously imported, and Lechery orders
his finest wine (11. 470~481). The taverner serves them a
"good restoratyff," and the Magdalen, delighted with the
wine.tells the taverner, "grom of blysse,“ that indeed he
speaks truth, and that to her he is courteous and kind

(11. 486-490).

As the Magdalen and Lechery sip their wine, Curiosity,
a "gallant," blusters into the tavern and boasts of his
"lady constant," of his fashionable clothes, and of his
favorite pastime (11. 491-506). Lechery tells the Magdalen
that this man is for her, to "sett" her in "sporttes and
talkyng," and the Magdalen, declaring that they will make
full merry, promptly asks the taverner to call Curiosity in
to them (11. 508-510).

Curiosity dashes in, tosses out a flowery love speech
to the Magdalen, addressing her as his dear duchess and
vowing his love to her for always (11. 515-519). The
Magdalen, overwhelmed with Curiosity's sudden "love," asks
him if he thinks her a "kelle" (1. 520). Curiosity assures
her that he thinks her no "whore" and begs her to return
his love, for he cannot refrain from loving her, so womanly
is her person (11. 521-526).

The lovers dance, have seps in wine, and the Magdalen
tells Curiosity thatlmn:love begins to "close" in him

(11. 550-559). Curiosity suggests that they take a walk,

17

and the Magdalen agrees, vowing that she will go to the
world's end with him, her "dere derlyng," and she will, if
need be, die for his sake (11. 545—546).

As the lovers exit, the Bad Angel, the World, the Flesh,
and the Devil enter, and the Bad Angel gloats over the
Magdalen's fall for "pryde callyd coriosite" (11. 547-554).
The Devil "trembles and trots with glee," for all hell will,
he says, rejoice over winning the Magdalen (11. 555—559).

Time has passed when, in the next scene, we see the
Magdalen, alone, enter an "arbor" and announce that she
will rest "a-mons thes bamys precyus of prysse" until one
of her "valentynes," a "blossom of blysse" who is wont to
"halse and kysse" her, will appear (11. 564-571). She falls
asleep.

The playwright momentarily moves from the Morality to
set the scene for the New Testament story of the anointing
of the Christ by a penitent sinner at the house of Simon.
At Simon's house we hear Simon announce that he has ordered
a dinner to cheer his friends and express his desire that
the prophet of "trew perfytnesse" will join the company.

But the playwright immediately switches back to the
technique of the Morality as he returns the scene to the
Magdalen's arbor to dramatize the Magdalen's repentance.

We hear the Good Angel ask the Magdalen why she is so un-
stable and reprove her for her delight in "fleshly lust" as

he warns her that her soul will "lie in hell's fire" if she

18

does not leave her vain and variable works and let him be
her guide (11. 588—601). The Magdalen's repentance is
sudden. She laments her sins, vows to seek the prophet who
will relieve her by his "oil of mercy." She will take
"swete bawmys" to him and sadly follow him "in eche degre"
(11. 602-614). She forsakes her worldly lovers for the
Christ.

‘Again at Simon's house, we see Simon and his guests,
including Jesus, seated at table, and the Magdalen "follows
along" calling herself a cursed caitiff and lamenting her
sins but hoping that the good "lord of lorddes," who knows
her heart, will reward her with his grace (11. 651-640).

She enters Simon's house, washes Jesus' feet with her tears,
wipes them with her hair, anoints them with precious
"bawmys." Jesus thanks Simon for the great "repast" and
tells him the parable of the two debtors, from Luke 7: 41-45,
and applies the parable to the Magdalen's washing his feet
with tears of her bitter "wepyng" and, “lowly knelyng,"
anointing them with ointment, and wiping them with her hair
"fayr and brygth shynning" while Simon, Jesus says, did none
of these things. Jesus forgives the woman her "wrecchednesse"
and thereby makes her "hol In sowle" (11. 659-677).

The Magdalen blesses Jesus, "lord of ever-lastyng lyfe,"
"repast contemplatyff," and vows to clothe herself in humil-
ity since she has sinned in the "synne of pryde" (11. 678-

685)° Jesus praises her, for she is, he says, expert in

19

contrition. She has in her soul, Jesus says, an inward
might that has purchased light from darkness. He tells her
that her faith has saved her and made her "bryth" and sends
her away in peace (11. 686-691).

The seven devils, the stage direction tells us, now
leave the Magdalen and, with the Bad Angel, enter "into hell
with thondyr" (Part I, sc. 14). The Magdalen thanks Jesus
for restoring her soul to health, for removing her from
"whanhope" (11. 692—694). Jesus again praises the Magdalen
for her contrition and promises her that if she keeps free
of negligence, she will be partner of his bliss (699-704).

The Good Angel enters and praises Jesus, "delectabyll
Ieusus, sovvereyn sapyens,“ and asks Jesus to "illumyn ower
ygnorans with your devynyte!" He addresses Jesus, "0 lux
vera," 0 true light, and asks him to grant his "lucense" so
that we will not be seduced by the "spyrte of errour," that
we may come to bliss "with your gostely bred to fede vs"
(11. 709—721).

The scene switches from the serious to slapstick. In
hell, Satan, "hampord with hate," debates with the devils
and the Bad Angel, whom Satan calls beetle-browed bitches
for having let the Magdalen escape them. The Bad Angel
explains that the spirit of grace "temptyd" that "Ipocryte"
away from him and the devils. The scene ends with the Bad
Angel and the seven demons receiving a beating on the

"bottokkys" before they are ordered by Satan to set a house

20

on fire. While the house burns, the devils sink back to
their "felaws blake" (11. 722-747).

We then see the Magdalen back at her castle as she
reports to Martha and Lazarus that she has been made clean
of her sins by the grace of the "blyssyd prophet," and she
vows to apply herself to grace (11. 748-759). Martha
praises Jesus, and Lazarus welcomes his sister back to her
"towere" (11. 760—767).

The Magdalen then says a prayer in which she echoes
the Good Angel's emphasis on Christ the Light. She says:

Cryst, that is the lyth and the cler daye,

He hath on-curyd the therknesse of the clowdy nyth.

of lyth the lucens and lyth veray,

Wos prechyng to vs is a gracyows lyth,

Lord, we be-seche the, as thou art most of myth,

Owt of the ded slep of therknesse de-fend vs aye!

gyff vs grace ewyr to rest In lyth,

In quyet and In pes to serve the nyth and day!

(11. 768-775)

The Magdalen praises Christ the true light and the clear
day, who has uncovered the darkness of the cloudy night,
and whose preaching is a gracious light. And while she
beseeches him, the light of lights, most powerful, to keep
them always from the dead sleep of darkness, to give them
grace ever to rest in light and to serve Christ in I'quiet

and in peace" night and day, Lazarus begins to die.

21

Lazarus calls out for help (11. 776-785), and the
Magdalen tells him to take comfort and says that she and
Martha will go get help for him (11. 784-787). They meet
Jesus and ask him to help his "lover" Lazarus who is in
great distress. Jesus says that he will send his grace to
Lazarus (11. 784-801).

When Mary and Martha return to their brother, they
find him dying, crying out, "A! deth deth, thou art on—kyndl"
(1. 821). They bury Lazarus while the neighbors, clad in
black and weeping with "great dolor," join them. The people
return to the Magdalen's castle, and the scene moves to
Jesus and his disciples.

Jesus tells his disciples that they as "chyldyurn of
lyth" will go to Lazarus to save him from grievous sleep,
and he announces to his disciples the necessity for his own
coming "passion" for redemption of mankind (11. 851-868).
Martha and Mary, told by a neighbor that Jesus is coming,
run to meet Jesus, and each expresses regret that Jesus had
not been there to keep Lazarus from death (11. 875-892).

Jesus calls Lazarus from the grave, and Lazarus praises
Jesus for his works of wonder which let men know that
nothing is impossible to the Lord, for, Lazarus says, his
body and soul were parted asunder and he would have rotted
had not Jesus restored him to life (11. 911-920). Now all
of the peOple, the stage direction says, in one voice announce
their belief in Jesus (Part I, sc. 20). Jesus thanks them

and tells them to go in peace (11. 921-924).

22

The Digby playwright again switches from the serious
to the comic as he sets the scene for the Magdalen's future
mission to Marseilles. We see that the Magdalen will have
to deal with the "head of all heathendom." The King of
Marseilles rants against the blabber-lipped bitches who
refuse to bow to his laudable presence, for he is, he says,
the head of all heathendom. He boasts of his well-favored
wife, "fresh as a falcon," and the queen thanks her husband
for his compliments (11. 925-957).

There comes a "cry and Yelle" by a devil who recounts
the harrowing of hell by the "King of Joy," who is as
bright as a fire's blaze and who has delivered Adam and
Abraham and all their kin from "lymbo" into "paradyse" and
has gone to Galilee (11. 965—991).

The scene shifts back, both in time and place, to the
scene similar to that of the Quem gpaeritis plays. In
Jerusalem, the Marys lament the death of Jesus. The Magdalen
laments first: "Alas! alas! for that ryall beml" The other
Marys lament, and the Magdalen suggests that they go to the
monument to anoint Jesus "body and bon" with precious balms
to make amends for their "trespas" (11. 1011-1018). Two
angels clad in white appear to the women at the sepulchre,
and the first angel tells the women that Jesus has arisen
and sends them to "sey to his dysypylles and to peter he
xall a-pere" (11. 1024-1026). The second angel tells the

women that they will see Jesus in Galilee.

25

The Marys meet Peter and John, and the Magdalen tells
them that Christ's body has been borne away and that she
fears that it has been defiled (11. 1051-1054). Peter and
John, lamenting Jesus' pains, go to the sepulchre with the
Magdalen. The Magdalen laments the "dolor and dyssese“
that dwells in her heart, and the first angel asks her why
she weeps, whom she seeks, "with dolor thus" (11. 1055-1058).
Just as she requests that the angel tell her who has borne
away her Lord, Jesus appears and, echoing the angel's ques-
tion, asks the Magdalen whom she seeks. The Magdalen asks
Jesus if he has borne away her Lord, for she has, she says,
purposed in each degree to have him with her, "the whyche my
specyall lord hath be" and she "his lover" (11. 1065—1068).

Jesus says, "0 mari!" The Magdalen, recognizing Jesus
when he calls her by name, desires to anoint him and to
kiss him (11. 1069-1075). But Jesus says, "Towche me natt,
maryi" For, he continues, he has not yet ascended to his
father, to her father, and he asks her to tell his brothers
that he will ascend (11. 1074-1077).

The Magdalen tells Jesus that she at first thought him
"Symoyd" the gardener (11. 1078-1079).10 Jesus answers,

"so I am, for-sothe, mary," and he explains that man's heart
is his garden, in which he sows seeds of virtue all the

year, rends up by root foul weeds and vices, and when the

 

10Professor Arnold Williams suggests that the text's
"Symovd" should be amended to "Symoyd" since the "v" is
probably a "y" that did not altogether print.

24

garden is watered with tears, he says, virtues spring up

and smell full sweet (11. 1081-1085). The Magdalen praises
Jesus as a worthy emperor, a high divinity, and says that
his words are a joyful tiding, and that unto all people who
"after us shall reign" this knowledge of his deity will be
joyful (11. 1086—1091). Jesus replies that he will appear
to all sinners, as he does to her, if they will seek him
with fervent love, and he tells the Magdalen to be steadfast
and he will always be with her, and with all those who are
"meek" to him (11. 1092-1095).

Jesus exits, and the Magdalen goes to the other Marys
to tell them of her joy in seeing Jesus (11. 1096—1105).
The other Marys wish that they could see Jesus, and he
immediately appears to them. They ask his blessing, and he
grants it and sends the Marys to tell his brethren to go to
Galilee where they will see him "bodyly, with here carnall
yee" (11. 1116-1124). The Magdalen hymns praises to Jesus
and his "incarnation" as the Marys go to do Jesus' bidding
(11. 1125-1152).

The mood changes as the scene moves back to Marseilles
where we get a further glimpse of what the Magdalen's mis-
sion to Marseilles will involve. The king is preparing to
sacrifice to his gods with "multetude of myrth" (11. 1155-
1158). The "presbyter" and his "clericus" ready the altar
and indulge in a bawdy "flyting" match with its inevitable

finale, a heating for the boy by the outwitted elder.

25

They perform a parody of the mass and display "Mahound's"
relics for the queen and king (11. 1176-1248).

The playwright moves to more sober scenes, to Pilate's
place and then to the Magdalen's narration of Christ's
death and his ascension to heaven where, the Magdalen says,
he is now king. She speaks of his great kindness and of
his having given "us knowyng" to understand every language
and tells of his disciples having gone to diverse countries
to teach and preach of Jesus (11. 1556-1548).

Boldly breaking with Biblical sources, the playwright
next pictures Jesus, in heaven, as he hymns his mother the
Moon. Jesus tells of his having rested in the moon, in the
palace of Phoebus' brightness, in the vessel of pure clean-
ness, in his mother, whose goodness, Jesus says, no tongue
can eXpress and whose joys no clerk can write. And as Jesus
thus hymns his mother, he remembers the kindness of “Mary
Maudlyn." He will, he says, send his angel Raphael down to
tell her that she is to go by sea to convert the land of
Marseilles (11. 1549-1571). Raphael goes to the Magdalen
and tells her that she is to be "an holy apostylesse" to
Marseilles where she alone will teach all that land God's
laws, and the Magdalen goes to find a ship (11. 1586-1594).

There enters a ship with a "mery song," and the
Magdalen boards, sails to Marseilles, disembarks, and praying
to Christ for victory against the fiend's flame, goes to the

king's palace (11. 1446—1455). She beseeches the king, in

26

the name of Jesus, to let her live in his land, but the king
exclaims, "Jesu! what devil is he?" and tells the Magdalen
that he will "fell her flat" (11. 1446-1455). The Magdalen
tells him that she was sent by Christ to save the king from
his "mysbelief" (11. 1466-1469). The king's curiosity is
piqued, and he questions her about her god.

The Magdalen gives a day-by-day account of the crea—
tion (11. 1488-1566). The king says that she is right, but
his gods, not hers, did these things. He threatens to cut
out her tongue (11. 1527-1550). The Magdalen, speaking
gently, asks the king to tell her of his gods (11. 1551—1554).

The king orders all his people to the temple and takes
the Magdalen to view his god's power. He begs his god to
speak to this "Christian" but gets no answer (11. 1559-1547).
The Magdalen asks permission to pray to her God to show the
king a miracle (11. 1548-1551). The king tells her to pray
her fill, till her knees ache (1. 1552), and as the Magdalen
prays for enlightenment and for protection of her life, the
idol in the temple quakes (11. 1555—1554). She again prays,
asking Christ's goodness to descend to his "lover," and a
cloud comes from heaven, sets the temple on fire, and the
priest and the clerk "sink" (11. 1555-1558).

The king then tells the Magdalen that he and his wife
have been together many years, but his wife could never
conceive a child. He promises to obey the Magdalen's God
if the Magdalen can find a means of making his wife conceive

(11. 1565-1570). The Magdalen tells the king to believe

27

in her God, and she expresses hOpe that the queen will soon
conceive (11. 1571-1574). The king retires to his chamber.

The Magdalen prays to Christ to conserve and keep her,
for she is hungry and thirsty (11. 1579-1586). Jesus ap-
pears in heaven and says that his grace will grow and
descend to "mary my lover" to amend her state (1. 1588).

He sends two angels to lead her with "reverent light" to
the king's chamber to ask for some of his goods (1. 1594).

The angels, clothed in white, come to the Magdalen.
She exclaims, "O gracyus god, now I vnderstond!" as she
eXplicates the meaning of the clothing of white as a
"tokening" of meekness and says that she will obey Jesus
with "lowlynesse" (11. 1607-1610). The angels, carrying
lights, then lead the Magdalen to the king's chamber where
the Magdalen addresses the king as troublous, “froward,”
and mad, and asks him to change his mood and give her of
his goods to save her from hunger, thirst, and cold (11.
1611—1618).

The king awakens, "mery and glad," and recounts to the
queen his marvellous dream in which he saw a fair woman
clad in white and led by a bright angel, and he heard the
woman speak sad words to him (11. 1619-1626). The queen
says that she also saw the vision and thought that their
room would have burned because of the light which was all
about, and that she too heard the "wordes of dred" telling
the queen and king to help those in need by giving of their

goods (11. 1627—1654).

28

The king sends a knight to fetch "that woman," and the
Magdalen gladly comes (11. 1658-1646). She prays the "high
trinity" to be with the king and asks the king what he wants
of her (11. 1647-1650). When the king tells the "fair
woman" that it is his delight to refresh her with food,
money, and clothes, the Magdalen assures him that he will
fulfill God's commandment if he sustains "poor folk" in
trouble (11. 1651-1656). The king then asks the "blyssyd
woman" to rehearse the joys of her Lord (11. 1657-1658).

The Magdalen blesses the hour that the king accepted
God's laws and tells him that his wife is great with child,
as the king had desired (11. 1659-1668). The queen promptly
feels the child stir in her womb, blesses the Magdalen as
the root of their salvation, and vows to worship the
Magdalen's God with due reverence (11. 1669-1672). The king
then asks the "fair woman" what her name is, and the Magdalen
replies, "Mary maudleyn with-owtyn blame" (1. 1676).

The king addresses her as blessed Mary and thanks her
God and "specyally ye" (11. 1677-1680). She tells the king
that he shall thank Peter, her master, who will "Christen"
him against the "fiends power" (11. 1681-1685). The king,
glad of the news, places her in charge of his property until
he returns to Marseilles. The queen wants to go with the
king to be made a "christian woman" by Peter, but the king
asks her why, when she is with child, she desires to go.

The queen's pleading, however, brings the king to agree that

she may go with him. He asks that Jesus and this blessed

29

woman, the Magdalen, be their guide (11. 1698-1711). As
the Magdalen gives them the blessing of God, a ship appears
on the scene.

The king and queen, after a bit of banter with the
shipman, set sail for the Holy Land. The queen prays to
the Magdalen, "blessyd lady," flower of womanhood, to save
them from drowning on the voyage (11. 1746-1749), and the
king tells the queen to have no fear but to trust in the
Magdalen who will save them from perils by praying to God
for them (11. 1750—1755).

The queen suddenly gives birth to her child, and with—
out woman's help in her “nede,” dies. She calls on "mary
Maudleyn" to lead her soul and commits herself to God's
hands (11. 1754-1766). The king, fearing that his child
will also die, prays to God to release his soul from sorrow
(11. 1767-1775).

A storm rages, and the shipman's boy says that the dead
body on board causes the storm and therefore must be cast
out (11. 1779-1781). The king pleads that instead of throw-
ing his wife's body into the sea, they place it, with his
child, on a rock. The shipman agrees, and as the king
places his wife and child on the stone, he kisses them and
prays to "blyssyd Mavdleyn" to be their guide (11. 1792-1797).

The ship reaches the Holy Land, the king pays his fare,
gives the shipman and his boy a tip, and goes ashore. He

finds Peter and explains that a woman named "mary Maudleyn,"

50

of whom he thinks no guile, has sent him to Peter to be
baptized (11. 1820-1828). Peter baptizes the king and
leads him through the “stations" and blesses him when he
leaves for Marseilles.

The king finds the same shipman who had brought him to
the Holy Land and has the shipman return him to Marseilles.
From the ship the king sights the rock on which his wife
and child had been left, finds both the queen and the boy
alive, and praises God. The queen hymns praise to the
"almyty maydn," her soul's comfort, to the “demur maudlyn,"
her body's sustenance and her guide into the Holy Land where
she has seen Christ's cross and sepulchre, gone to the
"stations," and been baptized (11. 1900-1911). The king
thanks Jesus and the Magdalen for preserving his wife and
child (11. 1912-1915).

They sail to Marseilles and disembark to find the
Magdalen preaching to the people (11. 1924-1959). Her sermon
is Christ's "Sermon on the Mount." The king hails the
Magdalen as the health of their souls and "repast contemp-
latyff," tabernacle of the blessed trinity, comfortable
succor for man and wife (11. 1940-1945). The queen hails
the Magdalen as chosen and chaste of women alone, whose
nobleness the queen has not, she says, wit to tell, and
praises the Magdalen for her high "holynesse" which saved
the queen and her child on the rock of "ston" (11. 1944-

1947).

51

The Magdalen welcomes the royal family home, tells them
that they have become God's knights, and returns the king's
property to him. She then announces that she will labor
forth to purchase more "spiritual strength" (11. 1960-1961).
The queen and the king beg the "blessyd Mary, sweet succor,"
to pity them and so not depart from them (11. 1962—1965).
But the Magdalen, after telling them that she will always
remember them and be their "bede-woman," gives them her
blessing and goes into the wilderness (11. 1966-1969).

The queen and king lament their loss of this "lady fre,"
their guide and governor, the sweet "sypresse," whose
departure has left them neither "game nor glee," but the king
will now, he says, build churches and punish severely anyone
who will speak against his new faith, for "Mahound" and his
laws the king now defies (11. 1975-1989).

The Magdalen as a missionary to Marseilles, then, not
only preaches Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, but she also
brings about the queen's conception of a child, protects a
ship at sea, restores the queen to life, and preserves the
life of both the queen and her child.

The Magdalen's next role in the Digby play is that of
a hermit. The Digby playwright telesc0pes her last thirty
years of life spent on the desert and shows her not only as
a "contemplatyff" but also as Christ's "wel-belovyd frynd"
who kisses the earth as she dies. We see her in the desert

where, she says, she will abide to save her "sowle from synne,"

52

loving her lord, living in humility, in charity at the
reverence of "ower blyssyd lady," and in abstinence as her
conscience craves of her (11. 1997-1999). She forsakes all
worldly food to be "contemplatyff" (11. 2001-2005).

The scene moves to heaven where Jesus praises the
sweetness of prayers sent up to him by his "wel-belovyd
frynd with-owt" variance, whom he will relieve with spiritual
food (11. 2004-2006). He tells the angels to carry her up
into the clouds to feed her "manna," and the angels, prais-
ing him, descend to the wilderness.

An angel tells the Magdalen that she will be enhanced
in heaven above virgins, she will be honored with joy and
reverence and received into the clouds to be given spiritual
food (11. 2020-2027). The Magdalen, full of joy, is lifted
into the clouds with "reverent song" where she praises Jesus
and thanks him for filling her with so great felicity,
which shows her "game and glee" (11. 2052-2059).

A priest enters the wilderness, and he asks Jesus to
let him see that "person" who is the center of the great
"mystery" shown from heaven, "with grett myrth and melody"
(11. 2040-2045). He sees the Magdalen and hails her as
Christ's delection, sweeter than sugar or "cypresse," and
tells her that she is great with God for perfectness. She
is, he says, the Joy of Jerusalem, whom he has not seen
for this thirty "wynter and more" (11. 2046-2055).

When the priest asks her to tell him of her lord, the

Magdalen answers that she has been lifted to heaven three

55

times a day for thirty years and that she has spoken only
with God's bright angels. She welcomes the priest and tells
him that the time has now come for her to ascend (11. 2054-
2071).

As the priest returns to his cell, the scene flashes
again to heaven where Jesus says that the Magdalen will have
a crown and dwell in joy, forever saved. He sends his angels
to tell the priest to "hossell" Mary (11. 2074-2081). One
angel goes to the priest while the other goes to the Magdalen
to tell her that she will this day be received with angels'
song, for her soul will depart from her body (11. 2094—2097).
The Magdalen, delighted, is given by the priest the “bred of
lyf" to bring her soul to everlasting light, and she praises
God for the celestial bread which will illumine her soul to
bliss (11. 2102-2115). She asks her Lord to open his blessed
gates and kisses the earth:

thys erth at thys tyme fervently I kysse.
(1. 2115)
She commends her spirit to God and dies.

The angels take her soul to heaven where a merry song
is sung for the Magdalen. The priest hymns to the Magdalen
of her great solace to dwell in heaven's bliss with "glee"
and says that he will take care of the body of Mary and give
it to the bishop to bury "by name" with all reverence and
solemnity (110 2124-2152). The priest then announces that

the play is over, blesses the audience, and requests the

54

"clerkys with woycys cler" to sing the Te Deum (11. 2155-
2140).

We have seen, then, that the Magdalen of the Digby
play has sometime acquired a family, a past, a many-sided
character. She has become as “great as God for perfectness,"
a very goddess. We have seen her as the daughter of Cyrus
and the sister of Martha and Lazarus, as a "beryl of beauty,"
as a lover of fine wines, as the lover of wordly men, as
Jesus' anointer who dried his feet with her hair "fair and
bright shining," as the "lover" of the Christ, as "an holy
apostylesse" to Marseilles, as a restorer and preserver of
life, as a hermit living in the desert for thirty years.
We have seen her bring about the queen's conception of a
child. We have seen her protect a ship at sea. And we have
seen her fervently kiss this earth as she dies.

The Magdalen of the Digby play raises many questions.

Why, for instance, doesn't one of the other Marys, who, in

the Qgem quaeritis plays, goes to the sepulchre seeking

 

Christ, become a central figure in later medieval plays?
Why doesn't Martha, who, according to Jacobus a Voragine,
slays a dragon, attain the stature of heroine in literature?
For what reasons is the Magdalen given such literary
prominence? And where does the Digby playwright find the
attributes which make his heroine a complex figure, a woman
with a past and a future far beyond the moment of her life

shown in the Quem quaeritis plays?

55

Every question implies, as E. H. Gombrich points out
in Art and Illusion, a tentative hypothesis. "We look for
something," Gombrich says, "because our hypothesis makes
us eXpect certain results." We see if those results follow,
and if they do not we must revise our hypothesis, and the
hypothesis which finally survives "we feel entitled to
hold, pro tempore."11

Implicit in the Magdalen questions are the hypotheses
that nothing grows from nothing, that man's imagination works
through eclectic syncretism of the old in the creation of
the new, that the literary figure of the Magdalen results
from the shaping of myths around the Mary Magdalene of the
New Testament canonical gospels, and that there are probable
reasons for the shaping of myths around the Magdalen rather
than around any other feminine figure.

To observe the shaping of myths around the Magdalen is
at once to deepen understanding of the human imagination
and to broaden understanding of the literary figure of the
Magdalen. To look closely at the beginnings of the mythical
Magdalen, I examine, as does no other study which I have
seen, the Magdalen pictured in apocryphal writings from the
early Christian period. For becoming aware of her signifi-
cance in these earliest attempts to create a Christian

literature is, I think, of deep importance in seeing in

 

1].E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, a study in the
psychology of pictorial representation (Bollingen Series
XXXV, 5, New York, second revised edition, 1961), p. 521.

56

perspective the Magdalen who becomes the heroine of the
fifteenth-century Digby play.

As do others concerned with the study of the Magdalen,
I too look at the figure in the New Testament canonical
gospels and at the other New Testament figures with whom
she is early identified. We can, in fact, begin to find
answers to the questions concerning the literary figure of
the Magdalen by viewing closely the Mary Magdalene of the
canonical gospels and by noting the myth as it begins to
take shape in the identification of the Magdalen with other
New Testament figures before we examine the figure in the

apocryphal writings.

CHAPTER II

MARY MAGDALENE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANONICAL
GOSPELS AND OTHER NEW TESTAMENT FIGURES
WITH WHOM SHE IS IDENTIFIED

Although the Magdalen is named only fourteen times
in the canonical gospels, she is mentioned in each of them,
five times by John, four times by Mark, twice by Luke, and
three times by Matthew. In the Gospel of Matthew we see
the Magdalen first with the mother of James and of Joseph,
and with the mother of the sons of Zebedee at the crucifixion
of Jesus, "at a distance," among the women who had followed
Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him.12
Erant autem ibi mulieres multae a longe,
quae secutae erant Jesum a Galilaea,
ministrantes ei. Inter quas erat Maria
Magdalene, et Maria Jacobi, et Joseph
mater, et mater filiorum Zebedaei.
(Matthew 27: 55-56)

We then see her with the "other Mary" sitting opposite the

sepulchre where Joseph of Arimathea has placed the body

 

laAll Biblical references throughout this study are to
the Biblia Sacra, Juxta Vulgatum Clementinam, printed in
Belgium, 1956.

 

57

58

of Jesus.

Erat autem ibi Maria Magdalene, et altera

Maria, sedentes contra sepulchrum.

(Matthew 27: 61)

Matthew then mentions her with the other Mary going three
days later, late on the Sabbath as the first day of the
week began to dawn, to see the sepulchre.

Vespere autem sabbati, quae lucescit in

prima sabbati, venit Maria Magdalene et

altera Maria videre sepulchrum.

(Matthew 28: 1)

And an angel appears, tells the women not to be afraid for
Jesus has arisen, shows them the empty tomb, and asks them
to report the resurrection of Jesus to the disciples. And
the women quickly go, "cum timore et gaudio magno" (Matthew
28: 8), in fear and great joy, to tell the disciples. They
meet Jesus on the way, embrace his feet, and worship him.
And Jesus tells them not to be afraid but to go tell his
brothers that they should go to Galilee where they will see
him (Matthew 28: 2-10). Matthew does not mention the women
again.

The GOSpel of Mark also first mentions the Magdalen
with Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joseph, and
Salome, among the many women who had followed Jesus and
ministered to him, looking on the crucifixion from a dis-

tance (Mark 15: 40-41). And we see Mary Magdalene and Mary

59

the mother of Joseph at the burial beholding the monument
where Jesus is placed by Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15: 47).
But in the Gospel of Mark we find an event not mentioned in
Matthew: the three women, when the Sabbath is past, buy
spices in order that they may go to anoint Jesus.

Et cum transisset sabbatum, Maria Magdalene,

et Maria Jacobi, et Salome emerunt aromata ut

venientes ungerent Jesum.

(Mark 16: 1)

There follows the journey to the monument on the first
day of the week, very early in the morning, just at the
rising of the sun, "orto jam sole" (Mark 16: 2), where
the women see a young man, "juvenum," envelOped in a shining
white robe, "c00pertum stola candida" (Mark 16: 5), and they
are told by the young man not to fear, for Jesus has arisen,
and are asked to take the message to the disciples "and
Peter." But here again Mark differs from Matthew in showing
the women filled with fear and trembling and taking flight
from the monument. "But they said nothing to anyone, for
they were afraid."

At illae exeuntes, fugerunt de monumento;
invaserat enim eas tremor et pavor; et
nemini quidquam dixerunt: timebant enim.
(Mark 16: 8)
Mark's account further differs from Matthew's in mentioning

that the resurrected Christ first appeared to Mary Magdalene,

40

"from whom he had ejected seven demons."

Surgens autem mane, prima sabbati, apparuit

primo Mariae Magdalene, de qua ejecerat septem

demonia.

(Mark 16: 9)

Mary Magdalene goes to tell those who had been with Jesus,
as they are "mourning and lamenting," and they do not
believe her (Mark 16: 10-11). This is Mark's final mention
of the Magdalen, but he emphasizes the incredulity of the
disciples.

We see that in Mark's gospel the Magdalen is isolated
from the other women as the one to whom the risen Christ
first appears and as the "apostle" to the doubting apostles.
Two other attributes here given the Magdalen become important
in her character as it is reflected in drama and in iconog-
raphy: her role as one of the Marys who had bought ointment
to anoint the body of Christ, and the parenthetical identi-
fication of her as a woman who had been possessed of seven
demons. We have seen the heroine of the Digby play possessed
of seven real demons, and we have seen her as one of the
Marys going to the sepulchre to anoint the body of Christ.

Luke also attributes to the Magdalen the past posses-
sion of seven demons, "Maria, quae vocatur Magdalene de qua
septem demonia exierant" (Luke 8: 5), in his first mention
of her among the women who accompanied Jesus in his journey-

ing through cities and towns, preaching and Spreading the

41

gospel. The Magdalen is, however, in Luke's gOSpel, simply
one of the many women who go to the tomb taking spices to
anoint the body of Christ, who are greeted by two angels,
and who go to report Christ's having arisen to the apostles.
To the apostles the words of the women seem like mad rav-
ingS, and they do not believe them.
Erat autem Maria Magdalene, et Joanna, et Maria
Jacobi, et ceterae quae cum eis erant, quae
dicebant ad apostolos haec. Et visa sunt ante
illos, Sicut deliramentum, verba ista; et non
crediderunt illis.
(Luke 24: 10-11)
The Magdalen is, then, in Luke's gospel given no particular
importance, since she is mentioned only twice and then in
company with all the women followers of Jesus.

John's gospel reflects, however, a Special interest in
the Magdalen, as well as in Mary the mother of Jesus, and
it provides the setting not only for the garden recognition
scenes of the Magdalen and the risen Christ, to become
popular in medieval drama and iconography, but also for the
medieval crucifixion scenes, the Pietas, with Mary the
mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, John, and sometimes another
woman standing at the foot of the cross. And the recogni-
tion scene, uniquely narrated by John, is, of course, the
indirect cause for the invention in France of Saint Rabony.

The Magdalen is first mentioned in the Gospel of John

in the scene at the cross where she stands with Jesus'

42

mother and his aunt and with the disciple whom Jesus loved,
"et discipulum stantem quem diligebat" (John 19: 26).

Stabant autem juxta crucem Jesu mater ejus,

et soror matris ejus, Maria CleOphae, et

Maria Magdalene.

(John 19: 25)

The next Magdalen scene in the Gospel of John follows the
account of Nicodemus' anointing the body of Jesus and plac-
ing the body in a new monument, in which no one had ever
been placed, "monumentum novum, in quo nondum quisquam
positus erat" (John 19: 41), in a garden near the place where
Jesus was crucified. Mary Magdalene goes early, while it
is still dark, to the tomb and sees that the stone has been
taken from the monument.

Una autem sabbati, Maria Magdalene venit

mane, cum adhuc tenebrae essent, ad monumentum,

et vidit lapidem sublatum a monumento.

(John 20: 1)
She runs to Simon Peter and the "other disciple whom Jesus
loved," traditionally identified as John, and tells them:
"They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and I do not know
where they have put him" (John 20: 2-5).
There follows another scene which is to become pOpular

in medieval drama, the race of Peter and John to the tomb.
Peter and John see the empty grave, but not understanding,

they return home. On the contrary, Mary Magdalene stands

45

outside the monument, weeping, "Maria autem stabat ad monu—
mentum foris, plorans" (John 20: 11). While She laments,
she leans over and looks into the tomb, sees two angels
who ask her why she weeps. She answers, turns around, and
sees Jesus but does not know that he is Jesus. And then
comes the dramatic narration of the recognition scene,
unique in the gospels.

Jesus asks the Magdalen: "Woman, why are you weeping;

whom do you seek? guem quaeris?" (John 20: 15). The

 

Magdalen, believing that he is the gardener, answers: "Sir,
if you have carried him away, tell me where you have placed
him and I will take him up.“

Jesus says: "Maria!" She turns around and says to
Jesus: "Rabboni," and obviously reaches out to touch him
or to embrace him, for he says, "Noli me tangere" (John 20:
16-17), for he has not yet, he says, ascended to his Father.
He then tells Mary to go to his brothers and tell them that
he will ascend to his Father, "and your Father, to my God
and your God," et Patrem vestrum, Deum meum, et Deum vestrum'i
(John 20: 17). Mary Magdalene goes to the disciples announc-
ing that She has seen the Lord and he has told her this
(John 20: 18).

The Magdalen in the Gospel of John is, then, pictured
in a much more intimate relationship with Jesus than She
is in the other canonical gOSpelS. She stands at the foot

of the cross with the mother and the aunt of Jesus and with

44

his well-beloved disciple. She goes alone at dawn to the
tomb seeking Christ, finds the tomb empty, and runs to

tell Peter and John that the body has been taken away.

And after the disciples leave the tomb, the Magdalen stands
alone outside the sepulchre, lamenting, until Jesus appears
to her in the garden. And Jesus makes sure that She recog-
nizes him by calling her by her name; he refuses to let her
touch him now but sends her to announce to his disciples
his coming ascension.

The Digby playwright, we recall, augments John's recog-
nition scene between the Magdalen and Jesus and so further
emphasizes the close relationship between the Magdalen and
the Christ. The Gospel of John omits, however, the scene
Shown in that of Mark and of Luke, and used by the Digby
playwright, of the women going to the tomb to anoint the body
of Jesus. And John does not mention the Magdalen's having
been possessed of seven demons. Instead, John's gOSpel
isolates the Magdalen, and in dramatizing her close relationw
Ship with Jesus makes her a figure of such importance in
the resurrection scene central to Christianity that imagi-
nations reach out for more knowledge of the woman to whom
the risen Christ appeared in flesh still sensitive to touch
and to whom the risen Christ spoke in a human voice.

The appeal of John's picture of the Magdalen searching
for and lamenting the dead Christ and happily finding him

resurrected is, I think, catholic in the deepest sense of

45

the word. The appeal is universal, omnitemporal, for be-
hind the Christian figures in the picture are Shadows of
antique figures of other deaths and resurrections. And
these Shadows are still visible behind the Digby play—
wright's augmented version of John's Magdalen searching for
and lamenting the dead Christ and joyously finding him
resurrected.

That early Christians hearing John's narration of
Christ's resurrection felt a deep sense of Similarity be—
tween the Magdalen, searching for and lamenting Christ, and
a goddess, an Ishtar, an Isis, a Venus, searching for and
lamenting a Tammuz, an Osiris, an Adonis, seems to me
highly probable. Similarities between the death and
resurrection of gods of antiquity and that of the Christ
have, of course, been noted by a number of scholars.

Scholars such as, for example, Sir James Frazer in The Golden
Bough,13 Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces,l4
and Herbert Weisinger in Tragedy and the Paradox of the
Fortunate Fall,ls have pointed up parallels, as well as

differences, between the ancient fertility rites and the

death and resurrection of the Christ.

 

13Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, a Study in Magic
and Religion (New York, 1922; one—volume abridged edition,
New York, 1960).

14Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
(New York, 1949; Meridian Book, 5rd printing, 1960).

15Herbert Weisinger, Tragedy and the Paradox of the
Fortunate Fall (East Lansing, Michigan, 1955I1

46

That peOple during the early centuries of Christianity
were quite aware of celebrations of gods and goddesses we
know from the writings of early Christians as well as from
those of non-Christians. In the Acts of the Apostles 19:
27-28, for example, the citizens of Ephesus are shown
praising Diana, and Saint Augustine in his The City of God
(Book II, 4) Speaks of his youthful pleasure in the "shameful
games which were celebrated in honor of gods and goddesses,"
such as Cybele, the mother of all gods. Apuleius describes
in his Metamorphoses (Book XI, chapter 47) his worship of
Isis, the "many—named" goddess.

E. K. Chambers says, in The Medieval Stage, that "side
by side with the conception of the heaven-god comes that of
his female counterpart, who is also, though less clearly,
indicated in all the mythologies." Chambers describes her,
in her earliest aspect, as the "lady of the woods and of the
blossoming fruitful earth."18 It is, I think, because the
Magdalen pictured in the Gospel of John's account of the
resurrection of Christ suggested, consciously or unconsciously,
to early Christians goddesses familiar to them that the
Magdalen excited their imaginations and brought about the
attribution to her of characteristics beyond those found in

the figure pictured in the canonical gOSpels.

 

16E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage (Oxford, 1905),
I, 105.

47

We have seen her in the four canonical gOSpels as a
woman from whom, according to Mark and Luke, seven devils
had been ejected. She is one of the many women, according
to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who followed Jesus from Galilee,
ministering to him, and who stood afar off at the crucifixion.
Or She is, according to John, the one who stands with Jesus'
mother and his aunt and John at the foot of the cross.

She goes with the "other Mary," according to Matthew
and Mark, or with the other women, according to Luke, or
alone, according to John, to see, according to Matthew and
John, or to anoint, according to Mark and Luke, the Christ.
And with the other Mary, Marys, or alone, She is told by
one angel (Matthew and Mark) or by two angels (Luke and John)
that Christ has arisen, and she is sent and goes (Luke, John,
Matthew), or does not go (Mark) to tell the apostles who
believe (Matthew and John) or who do not believe (Luke).
Although the risen Christ appears only to the disciples,
according to Luke, while, according to Matthew, he first
appears to the Marys, he appears first to the Magdalen,
according to Mark's statement and according to John's
dramatic narration.

These inconsistencies noted in the canonical gospel
accounts of the resurrection of Christ bring about, of
course, inconsistencies of details found in medieval plays
and in iconography, where we find, for example, sometimes

two, sometimes three, Marys going to the tomb, now one angel

48

and again two angels at the sepulchre. And the three
synoptic gospels, those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, provide
the basis for the first recorded resurrection plays of the
tenth and eleventh centuries as well as for the iconographic
representations of the sepulchre of Christ as it occurs in
art, according to Neil C. Brooks,l7 from the fourth century
into the latter part of the twelfth century when for the
first time the actual moment of the resurrection is depicted
in art.

The synOptic gospel references to the Magdalen provide,
then, a model for the figure pictured in extant Christian
plays of the tenth and eleventh centuries, and John's gospel
provides the model for the Magdalen in the recognition
scenes of the twelfth—century resurrection plays in which
the figure of Christ is first actually represented in the
drama. The fifteenth-century Digby heroine also retains
characteristics found in the Mary Magdalene sketched in the
four canonical gOSpelS. She is one of the Marys who go to
the tomb to anoint the body of Christ, she is the first to
whom the risen Christ appears, and She has seven devils
ejected from her.

Although these characteristics form the Skeleton for

the Digby heroine, they do not account for the Magdalen whom

 

17Neil C. Brooks, "The Sepulchre of Christ in Art and
Liturgy, with Special Reference to the Liturgic Drama," in
Universipy of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature
(Urbana, 111., May, 1921), Vol. VII, no. 2, pp. 7 and 15.

 

49

we have seen as the daughter of Cyrus and the sister of
Martha and Lazarus, or for the woman whom we have seen sip-
ping wine in a tavern, waiting for her "valentynes" in an
arbor, anointing the feet of Jesus and drying them with her
hair "fair and bright Shining," sailing to Marseilles as

"an holy apostylesse," converting a king and queen by bring-
ing about the queen's conception of a child, protecting a
ship at sea, living as a hermit for thirty years, and kiss-
ing the earth as she dies. Nor do the characteristics found
in the Mary Magdalene of the New Testament canonical gospels
altogether account for the numerous and varied monuments to
the omnitemporal figure of the Magdalen.

Early Christian imaginations reach beyond the gospels'
specific references to the Magdalen in order to fulfill a
desire for a more complex feminine figure closely associated
with the Christ. Very early the Magdalen was p0pularly
identified with the woman, told of in Luke 7: 56-50, who
was a sinner in the city, "quae erat in'civitate peccatrix"
(7: 57), and who, carrying an alabaster of ointment, went
to the house of Simon the Pharisee while Jesus was there,
washed Jesus' feet with her tears, dried them with her hair,
kissed them, and anointed them. And deSpite Simon's bitter
mutterings against the sinner and against Jesus' allowing
her to touch him, Jesus released her of her many sins be-
cause she had "loved much," and bade her go in peace for

her faith had, Jesus said, made her whole, "Fides tua salvam

50

fecit; vade in pace" (Luke 7: 50). We have seen the Digby
heroine in a slightly modified version of the Sinner who
washed Jesus' feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair,
and anointed them.

With the identification of the Magdalen as Luke's
anonymous sinner, it was possible for the imagination to
Specify the Magdalen as a prostitute who had "loved much"
and who visibly expressed her love for Jesus. Along with
this addition to the Magdalen came the identification of her
with the woman who, having an alabaster of precious ointment,
anointed Jesus while he was at table with his disciples in
Bethany, as told, with minor variations, in Matthew 26:
6-15, Mark 14: 5-9, and John 12: 1-8. In all three accounts,
the disciples are shown complaining about the woman's waste
of the precious ointment, and Jesus is pictured scolding
his disciples and telling them that the woman has anointed
him against his burial. The gOSpelS of Matthew and Mark
add prOphetic words of Jesus, words which have been through-
out the centuries applied by her devotees to the Magdalen.
Jesus says of the woman of Bethany to his disciples: "Amen
I say to you, wherever this gospel will be preached in the
whole world, this also that She has done will be narrated
in memory of her."

Amen dico vobis, ubicumque praedicatum fuerit
evangelium istud in universo mundo, et quod
fecit haec narrabitur in memoriam ejus.

(Mark 14: 9)

51

Since John names the woman Mary and links her with
Martha who serves the meal, the Magdalen is also identified
with Martha's Sister who, according to Luke 10: 58-42, was
praised by Jesus for having chosen the best part, "Maria
optimam partem elegit" (Luke 10: 42), by sitting at Jesus'
feet while Martha complained about having to do all the
serving. From this identification of Mary Magdalene with
Martha's sister comes the early Church Fathers' view of
the Magdalen as the figure of the contemplative life and of
Martha as the figure of the active life. The Digby play-
wright makes use of this attribute given to the Magdalen in
his picture of her as a contemplative in the desert, but
the playwright goes beyond the early Church Fathers' inter-
pretations of the contemplative.

Through John's account of the raising of Lazarus
(John 11: 1-44), another characteristic is added to the
Mary Magdalene of the New Testament. John identifies Mary
the sister of Martha and Lazarus with the woman of Bethany
who had anointed Jesus and dried his feet with her hair
(John 11: 2), and the Magdalen becomes that Mary whose
weeping for her dead brother Lazarus moved Jesus to tears,
"Et lacrymatus est Jesus" (John 11: 55). Although the Digby
playwright's heroine is the Sister of Martha and Lazarus,
she does not, as she does in other medieval works, move
Jesus to tears.

The Magdalen, through early identifications of her with

other canonical gOSpel figures, takes on, as we see,

52

attributes beyond those found in the specific New Testament
references to her. She becomes Martha's sister whose weep-
ing moved Jesus to tears; the anointer of Jesus at Bethany;
the prostitute who washed Jesus' feet with her tears, dried
them with her hair, and anointed them with precious oint—
ment, the prostitute whom Jesus released of her Sins, for
she had loved much.

The Magdalen becomes, in the early centuries of the
Christian era, indeed the anointer of the “Anointed." It is
no wonder that from the identification of the Magdalen with
the prostitute who anoints the Christ are derived her most
p0pular medieval iconographic attributes: her ointment jar
and her long flowing hair. We have seen her life as a
prostitute telescoped in the Digby play, and we have seen
the Digby playwright's allusion to her long fair hair, but
we have not yet found the basis for the whole complex
literary figure represented in the Digby play.

Early Christian imaginations continue the Shaping of
myths around the Mary Magdalene of the canonical gOSpels so
that the feminine figure close to the Christ grows in
complexity. And the writers of apocryphal works increase
the complexity of the Magdalen just as they augment the

importance of her closeness to the Christ.

CHAPTER III

THE MAGDALEN IN APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS

The attempt to enlarge the feminine figure pictured
in John's gospel as the woman closest to the Christ by
incorporating into her person other women mentioned in the
New Testament seems to me convincing evidence of the
efforts of early Christians to create a feminine counterpart
for Christ. The results of these efforts deeply affect the
literary figure of the Magdalen, the complex Magdalen whose
long life is dramatized in the Digby play. The apocryphal
writings give further evidence of the desire to place the
Magdalen in the role of Christ's companion. The Magdalen is,

for example, specifically referred to in the Gospel of Philip,

 

a work dating from the fourth or fifth century, as
"Magdalene, whom men called Jesus' companion."18

The apocryphal writings, Schneemelcher points out, are
a result of the diversity of doctrine in early Christianity
(N25, I, 64), and they indicate that the living oral tradi-

tions linger on even after the fixing of the canon

 

18New Testament Apocpypha, ed. Edgar Hennecke and
Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. into English by R. McL. Wilson
(Philadelphia, 1965), I, 277--hereafter referred to as NTA.

55

54

(N15, I, 78). The apocryphal writings are also a result of
early attempts to create a Christian literature, with
Christian heroes and heroines.

Although, as Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman
observe, many of the apocryphal writings were designated
as gnostic, and therefore as heretical, by early Church
Fathers, such as Irenaeus of the second century, Hippolytus
of the third century, and Epiphanius of the fourth century}53
the boundaries between gnosticism and Catholicism remained,
according to Schneemelcher (ETA, II, 177), fluctuating for a
considerable time. The apocryphal writings are not, then,
strictly either Catholic or gnostic. They combine elements
of both.

The apocrypha, as Montague Rhodes James notes in his
preface to The Apocryphal New Testament, "record the imagi-
nations, hopes, and fears of the men who wrote them; they
Show what was acceptable to the unlearned Christians of the
first ages, what interested them, what they admired, what
ideals they cherished for this life, what they would find in
the next." It is, I think, because the apocrypha record
desires and fears of men, learned or unlearned, that they
have, as James says, "indeed exercised an influence (wholly

dispr0portionate to their intrinsic merits) so great and so

 

19Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman, The Secret
Sayings of Jesus (New York, 1960), pp. 62-65.

 

55

widespread" on medieval art and literature.20

The Magdalen Shown in the apocrypha reflects, however
obliquely, a desire and a fear deep-rooted in humanity: a
desire for continuity and a fear of mortality. But the
Magdalen in the apocrypha also reflects a paradoxical desire
for and fear of sexual intercourse, for She is used in
apocryphal writings as a vessel for the dualistic view of
matter as evil and feminine, of spirit as good and male.

The paradoxical awe of sexual union is evident in the ambi-
valent view of the "companion" of Christ, the Magdalen who
is now woman, and again female "matter" become male "spirit,"
or a goddess of wisdom. Behind the ambivalent attitude
toward the Magdalen there lies not only the desire to con-
tinue the old by uniting it with the new, to keep alive
antique goddesses and Eastern dualistic ideas in the new
Christianity, but there lies also the fear of mortality, of
death, and of "corrUption" through sexual union of the male-
spirit with the female-matter, a fear, of course, at odds
with the desire for continuity of human life.

AS a vessel for these unconscious fears and desires,
the Magdalen, sometimes called Mariham, Mariamme, or Mary,
figures prominently in a number of apocryphal works. She
is the chief questioner in two works called the Opestions of

Mary, the Great Questions and the Little Questions, as She

 

20Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament
(1st edition, Oxford, 1924; corrected edition, 1960),
p. xiii.

56

is in the Books of the Savior and in the Pistis Sgphia.

 

She is in the Second century, Robert M. Grant and David Noel
Freedman point out, famous as a link in the handing down of
the secrets of revealed gnosticism.21 She is a link between
Jesus and the disciples as well as between gnosticism and
orthodox Christianity. To the Magdalen is, in fact, attri-
buted the Gospel of Mapy.22

The Gospel of Mary is in the form of a dialogue, sug-
gestive of Plato's dialogues, and from the fragment we can
see the important role given the Magdalen as the privileged
possessor of "gnosis," of mystical knowledge, given her by
Jesus. The gospel reflects also an ambivalence toward
woman, an ambivalence that results from the dualistic view
of the female as matter and the male as spirit. The gospel

is concerned with the nature of matter, of Sin, and of

 

alRobert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman, The Secret
Sayings of Jesus, p. 76.

2"’The fragment of the Gospel of Mapy, discovered in
1896 and contained in the COptiC Papyrus Berolinensis 8502,
comes from the fifth century, according to Robert M. Grant,
editor of Gnosticism, a source book of heretical writings
from the early Christian period (New York, 1961), p. 65.
Another fragment of the gospel, in Greek (listed by C. H.
Roberts in the "Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in
the John Rylands Library," Manchester, 1958, III, no. 465).
is assigned to the third century. Since Irenaeus refers to
the Gospel of Mapy, the original cannot date later than the
second century. The COptic text has been edited by Walter
Till in Die gnostischen Schriften der koptischen Papyrus
Berolinensis 8502 (Berlin, 1955), and Till's edition has
been, with the use of the Coptic text, revised and translated
into English by E. R. Hardy. I refer to Hardy's translation
published in Robert M. Grant's Gnosticism, a source book,
pp. 65-68.

 

 

57

revealed gnosis, and it includes the Magdalen's account of
the journey of the Soul through the AeonS. Although the
doctrines set forth are foggy, the picture of the Magdalen's
place in the gospel is quite clear.

The first six pages of the COptic papyrus are lost;
the fragment Opens with a question concerning matter.

"Will, then, matter be saved or not?" (Gnosticism, p. 65)
The Savior answers that all natures, all formed things, all
creatures, exist in and with one another and will again be
resolved into their own roots, because the nature of matter
is dissolved into the roots of its nature alone. "For this
reason," Jesus says, "you come into existence and die."

After Jesus' answer, Peter asks what the sin of the
world is, and Jesus replies that sin as such does not exist
but "you make sin when you do what is of the nature of
fornication." Jesus warns the disciples against being led
astray, tells them that the Son of Man is within them, sends
them to preach the gospel, and goes away. They are grieved
and ask how they can go preach the gospel when even the Son
of Man was not spared.

Then Mary stands up and tells them not to mourn or
grieve or be irresolute, for the peace of Jesus will be with
them and protect them. "Let us rather," she says, “praise
his greatness, for he prepared us and made us into men."
And the disciples' hearts change for the better (Gnosticism,

p. 66).

58

Peter says to Mary, "Sister, we know that the Savior
loved you more than other women. Tell us the words of the
Savior which you have in mind since you know them, and we
do not; nor have we heard them." Mary says, "What is
hidden from you I will impart to you," and she tells them
of her having seen Jesus in a vision and of her reporting
it to Jesus who said to her: "Blessed are you, Since you
did not waver at the sight of me. For where the mind is
there is your countenance." Mary reports that she then
asked Jesus if the mind which sees the vision sees it through
the spirit or through the soul, and Jesus answered, She says,
through neither, for the mind which sees the vision is be-
tween the soul and the spirit. The discourse is, perhaps
not unfortunately, broken off by the loss of three pages
from the papyrus (Gnosticism, p. 66).

The next portion of the Gospel of Mary_shows the Magdalen
telling the disciples of the journey of the soul through the
"powers," the fourth of which has seven forms, all partici-
pants in wrath and including darkness, desire, ignorance,
"arousing of death," and the "kingdom of the flesh." The
seven ask the soul, "Whence do you come, killer of men, or
where are you going, conqueror of space?" The soul answers
that her "desire" has come to an end, and "ignorance" is
dead, that she has been saved from "a world in a world,"
and that from this time she "will rest in the time of the

moment of the Aeon in silence" (Gnosticism, p. 67).

59

Andrew asks the other disciples (Gnosticism, p. 68)

 

if they believe these words, for he does not believe that
the Savior said them, "for certainly these teachings are,"
he says, "of other ideas." Peter does not believe the
words either and says, "Did Jesus then Speak secretly with
a woman in preference to us, and not Openly? Are we to
turn back and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?"

The Magdalen is grieved and asks Peter if he thinks
that she thought these things up herself and that she is
lying about the Savior. Levi comes to the defense of the
Magdalen and scolds Peter for his anger and for "contending
against the woman like the adversaries." Levi says, "But
if the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her?
Surely the Savior knew her well. .For this reason he loved
her more than us." And after Levi's words the Gospel of Mary
ends with the statement that all the disciples began to go
out in order to "proclaim and preach Jesus."

The Magdalen in the Gospel of Mary is, we see, the
woman whom Jesus loved more than any other, and She is the
person with whom he secretly Shared his "gnosis." As Christ's
partner in mystical knowledge and as the imparter of that
knowledge to the disciples, the Magdalen takes on attributes
of a goddess of wisdom. She is also, we see from her state-
ment that Jesus "has prepared us and made us into men," the
woman-matter become male-spirit. She is to Peter, at first,

the privileged woman who can impart Jesus' wisdom to the

6O

disciples, but she becomes an object of jealousy and of
doubt. An ambivalent attitude toward woman is demonstrated
both in the Magdalen's statement that She has been made

man and in Peter's conflicting reactions to her.

There are other examples of this ambivalent attitude
toward the Magdalen. In the Gospel of Thomas, for example,
Simon Peter says, "Let Mariham go out from among us, because
women are not worthy of life." And Jesus says, "See, I
shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too
may become a living Spirit, resembling you males. For every
woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of
heaven."23 Although this idea of woman-matter's being
inferior to male-spirit is not so directly expressed in
medieval plays, the notion lingers through the centuries
and affects the literary figure of the Magdalen seen in the
Digby play.

That the literary figure of the Magdalen embodies
characteristics of the Magdalen of the Apocrypha seems to
me obvious, particularly in her role as Christ's companion
who dwells in the desert for thirty years to gain "spiritual
strength" by forsaking material food so that her soul may,
as male-spirit, ascend to her "lover" Christ.

Even though Peter's resentment of the Magdalen does
not appear in the Digby play, it does Show up in medieval

plays contemporary with the Digby Mary Magdalene. In, for

 

23Gospel of Thomas, partly quoted in NTA, I, 522.

 

61

example, a fifteenth-century German Easter play, Das Erlauer

 

Ostergpiel 111,24 Peter says to the Magdalen after she has
told him of her having seen the risen Christ, "That rumor I
will not believe. Hurry home and mind your spinning. It
is a Sin and a Shame that females run all over the country-
side." Peter doubly insults the Magdalen by using, instead
of "die Frauen," the pejorative neuter "di weip."

Der red ich nicht gelauben will

secz dich din haim und spinn vill

ez ist eine grosse schant,

daz di weip lauffent uber lanti

(11. 1586-1589)

And Peter threatens to give her a clout on the ear, another
on the cheek, and a third on the neck, for, he says, she
is "ein tor," a fool.

ich gib dir mit der laffen

ains an das ar,

das du wfirst ein tor,

daS ander an das wang,

mag ich dir das ander erlang,

das dritt an den hals,

(11..1597—1402)
The German playwright's picture of Peter's resentment

of the Magdalen is, in the manner of homo ludens, playfully

 

 

24DaS‘Drama des Mittelalters, ed. Eduard Hartl
(Leipzig, 1957I, II, 205-260.

 

62

exaggerated; it is a medieval enlargement of the earlier
picture of the male disciple resentful of the woman who is
more loved by the Christ than is he. The entrance into
the drama of the characteristic attributed to Peter in the
apocryphal writings exemplifies the continuity of early
traditions, however inexplicably they were transmitted
through the centuries.

The Gospel of Mary is unique in being the only extant
gospel attributed to a woman. This fact in itself points
up the important place held by the Magdalen in early
Christians' imaginations. And the fact that she is Shown
as the woman whom Jesus loved more than any other gives
further evidence of early attempts to isolate her as Christ's
feminine counterpart.

More attempts to isolate the Magdalen as the woman
closest to Christ are evident in the Gospel of Bartholomew,
Latin copies of which date, according to Montague Rhodes
James in The Apocpyphal New Testament (p. 166), from the
ninth and eleventh centuries, and in Bartholomew's Book of
the Resurrection, Latin translations of which date from the
twelfth century (James, p. 186). In these works, translated
in the Middle Ages, the Magdalen is, as she was in the
earlier Twentieth Discourse of Cyril of Jerusalem, identi-
fied with the mother of Jesus. And indeed in Cyril's
Discourse, the Magdalen, Mary Jacobi, Mary of Cleopa, and

Mary the mother of Jesus are shown as one and the same person.

65

"The Virgin Mary," James reports (p. 87), "is repre-
sented as saying to Cyril: 'I am Mary Magdalene because
the name of the village wherein I was born was Magdaleia.
My name is Mary of CleOpa. I am Mary of James the son of
Joseph the Carpenter.'" James says that this "reckless
identification of the Virgin Mary with all the other Maries
of the gospels is characteristic of these Egyptian rhap-
sodies" (p. 88).

The "reckless identification" of all the Marys as one
person is, I think, manifestation of the desire, conscious
or unconscious, to create a single feminine counterpart for
the Christ. The Magadlen of the apocryphal writings, it
seems to me, fills the role of the companion of the "true
prophet" described in another apocryphal work, The True
Prthet.25

After defining the true prophet (p. 115) as "he who
from the beginning of the world, changing his forms and his
names, runs through universal time until, anointed for his
toils by the mercy of God, he comes to his own time and will
rest forever," the document describes the companion of the
true prophet. "There has been created as a companion for
the true prOphet a female being who is as far inferior to
him as metousia is to ousia [as the "particular" is to the

"universal"], as the moon is to the sun, as fire is to light.

 

25The True PrOphet, partly quoted in New Testament
Apocrypha, II, 115-117.

64

AS a female she rules over the present world, which is like
to her, and counts as the first prophetess; She proclaims
her prophecy with all amongst those born of women" (p. 117).

The Magdalen shown in the Gospel of Mary as the woman
whom Jesus loved more than any other, as the "prophetess"
proclaiming to the disciples revelations secretly given her
by Jesus, is the "female being" created by early Christian
writers as a companion for the "true prOphet." She is con-
sidered by Peter to be as inferior to Jesus as is matter
to spirit, as is the female to the male, but she has, Levi
says, been made worthy by Jesus who knew her well and there-
fore loved her more than the male disciples.

Somehow the early view of the Magdalen as Christ's
companion survives to color the literary figure seen in the

fifteenth-century Digby Mapy Magdalene. Beneath the Digby

 

Magdalen, Christ's ”wel-belovyd frynd" who is sent by Christ
as the "holy apostylesse" to Marseilles, breathes, whether
or not the Digby playwright realized it, not only the com-
posite Magdalen of the canonical gospels but also Christ's

companion of the apocryphal Gospel of Mapy.

 

Discernible also in the Digby playwright's heroine are
attributes Similar to those given the Magdalen in the Pistis

Sophia, for the figure in the Pistis Sophia is an eXpansion

 

of the Magdalen of the Gospel of Mary, The Magdalen is
again chief explicator; she is highly praised by Jesus as
becoming "pure spirit," and, as in the Gospel of Mary, she

is resented by Peter.

65

Pistis Spphia is contained in Codex Askewianus, a parch-
ment manuscript which was, according to Hennecke and
Schneemelcher, bought in a London bookShOp by Dr. Anthony
Askew, an antiquarian, in 1775 and purchased by the British
Museum in 1785 (NTA, I, 250). How and when the manuscript
reached England remains one of those mysteries that tantalize
students of medieval literature.

The manuscript, composed of 174 leaves, is according to

Legge, written in C0ptic.23

Scholars disagree on the date

of the writing, with guesses from the fourth century to the
ninth or tenth century (Pistis, p. ix). The first two of

the six documents in the manuscript make up the Pistis Sophia
and date originally, Legge believes, from the second century,
not later than A.D. 170 (Pistis, p. xliv), while the remaining
documents date between A.D. 245 and 588 (Pistis, p. xlviii).
,Legge bases his dates on the hypothesis that the documents

were originally written in Greek and that the Pistis SOphia

 

was taken from the works of Valentinus, who was eager to
amalgamate elements of Persian, Buddhist, and Egyptian

religions with Christianity; Legge thinks that the last four

 

26Pistis SOtha, literally translateted from the Coptic
by George Horner, with an introduction by F. A. Legge
(London, 1924), p. vii. .At the risk of being tedious, I re-
fer, for the purpose of this study, directly to Horner's
literal translation of the COptic manuscript into English.
Besides Horner's literal translation, there are a Graeco-
Latin version by Maurice George Schwartze (1855) and a
German version by Carl Schmidt (1925). For discussion of
translations of the translations, see Legge's introduction
to Horner's Pistis Spphia.

 

66

documents were written by later Valentians (Pistis, p. xlv).
The documents, at any rate, reflect the belief held by early
Christians, orthodox and unorthodox, that Jesus remained

on earth a dozen years after his resurrection.

All of the documents Show Jesus teaching his disciples
the "mysteries." Clearly evident in the mysteries are not
only elements of Oriental religions but also elements of
Ne0platonism and apocalpytic Judeo-Christianity, elements
found in other apocryphal writings. The eclecticism evi-
dent in the teachings illustrates, as Robert M. Grant sug-
gests in his source book of heretical writings, Gnosticism
(p. 17), the cultural cross-fertilization that took place
during the early centuries of Christianity. The cross-
fertilization reflected in the teachings attributed to Jesus
necessarily affects the figure of the Magdalen who next to
Jesus figures most prominently in the Pistis Sophia. The
teachings reveal dualistic ideas, Similar to those suggested

in the Gospel of Mary, ideas based on the view of good and

 

evil, of spirit and matter, of light and dark, of "purity"
and sexual union, of wisdom and ignorance, of life and death
as contrasting absolutes.

The world is seen as evil, and as Grant points out
(Gnosticism, p. 15), "only the divine Spark, which is some-
how imprisoned in some men, is capable of salvation." It
is saved by coming to ”know itself," through divine grace.

In its self-knowledge the divine Spark renounces the flesh,

67

leaves the world, in order to go into the light. To illus-
trate this means of salvation, Jesus narrates the story

of the "fall" into darkness and matter of Pistis Sophia,

of her repentance, and of Jesus' final redemption of her
into the light.

The popularity of figures Similar to Pistis Sophia is
manifested in the figure of Helen, worshipped by the fol-
lowers of so-called Simon Magus in the early centuries of
Christianity, and the creation of both the Pistis SOphia and
Helen further points up the desire to provide for the male
deity a female partner. The female partner, Helen or SOphia,
"falls" from her divine partner into prostitution and,
saved by her male deity, becomes a goddess both of wisdom
and of generation. The goddess is, whether she is Helen
or Sophia or Athena, as Robert M. Grant points out in his
provocative study Gnosticism and Early Christianipy, the
god's "Forethought, from which all grew and through which
all exists."27 She is at once Wisdom and the Mother of All.

The parallels between the composite Magdalen and Helen
and Pistis Sophia are as striking as are the similarities
between the Magdalen pictured in the Pistis Sophia and the
heroine of the Digby play. The Magdalen of the Digby play,
like the Pistis SOphia, has the "divine Spark" that comes

to know itself through divine grace and so renounces the

 

27Robert M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity
(New York and London, 2nd edition, 1966), p. 84.

68

world to go into the light. The medieval literary figure

of the Magdalen dramatizes the fall and the means of salva-
tion illustrated by the second-century work based on dualis-
tic ideas as well as a statement made about her in a

28 John Mirk says that the Magdalen gave

medieval sermon.
herself all to lechery so that She even lost the name of
"Mawdelen" and was called the Sinful woman. But since
Christ often made of the greatest Sinners the most holy,
Mirk says, when Christ saw "hys tyme," he gave the Magdalen
"grace for to know herselfe and to have repentaunce of her
mysdedys."

In the language of Neoplatonism, we can say that the
literary figure of the Magdalen is the "particular" of the
"universal" Pistis Sophia. The Magdalen of the Digby play
falls into prostitution and is "redeemed," after warnings
by the Good Angel, through her penitence, by Christ the
Light. That dualistic ideas similar to those found in the
Pistis Sophia contribute to the shaping of the heroine of
the Digby play we can see not only in the Magdalen who for-
sakes prostitution for the love of the Christ but also in
the woman who, "obeying her conscience," renounces material
food to gain "spiritual strength" in order that her soul
may unite with Christ the Light.

Immediately available to the Digby playwright was, of

 

28Mirk's Festial, a Collection of Homilies by John
Mirk, edited by Theodor Erbe (London, 1905), EETS ES 96,
p. 205.

69

course, the ancient dualistic contrast between light and
dark, for the contrast appears frequently in both the Old
Testament and the New. Jesus, for example, identifies him-
self to the Pharisees as the light which can lead men out
of darkness, in the Gospel of John 8: 12: "Again therefore,
Jesus Spoke to them, saying, 'I am the light of the world.
He who follows me does not walk in darkness but will have
the light of life.'"

Iterum ergo locutus est eis Jesus, dicens: Ego

sum lux mundi; qui sequitur me non ambulat

in tenebris, sed habebit lumen vitae.

Biblical sources do not, however, account directly for
the extension of the dualistic view to include the distinc—
tion between light-male-spirit and dark—female-matter, a
distinction drawn in the Gospel of Mapy as well as in the
Pistis Sophia and in other apocryphal works, a distinction
surviving to color the picture of the Magdalen seen in the
fifteenth-century Digby play.

The Magdalen in the Pistis Sophia is vividly Shown as

 

the one whom Jesus "will complete in all the mysteries of
the things of the Height" (Pistis, p. 15), and Jesus is
represented as the Light of Lights whose "vesture of light"
at first fills his disciples with fear (Pistis, p. 5).
Jesus first tells his disciples of his having come, at the
command of the "First Mystery," into the world of mankind

where he, in the form of Gabriel, found "Maria whom they

70

are wont to call my mother" and "cast powers of Light rulers
on her" (Pistis, p. 7).

And "Mariham having heard these words, saying them the
Savior, she gazed in the air for the space of an hour"
(Pistis, p. 15). The Magdalen, "Mariham," the first to speak
after Jesus has Spoken, asks her "Lord" to allow her to
Speak with boldness, and Jesus answers, "Mariham, Mariham
the happy, whom I shall complete in all the mysteries of
the things of the Height. ,Speak in boldness, because thou
art she whose heart straineth toward the Kingdom of the
heavens more than all thy brothers" (Pistis, p.15).

The Magdalen then explains at length the words of Jesus.
And Jesus praises her: "Well done, Maria, because thou art
happy beyond every woman who is upon earth, because thou
art she who will become the Pleroma of all the Pleromas and
the completion of all the completions" (Pistis, p. 14),
the fullness of all divine powers. The Magdalen, "glad
greatly," worships at Jesus' feet and questions him further,
and Jesus tells her that he will reveal to her everything
which she seeks.

After Jesus discourses on Places, Rulers, Spheres,
Aeons, Destinies, again Mary, "she who is beautiful in her
speaking, and the happy one," questions Jesus concerning
the purification of souls outside their "Places," and Jesus
praises her for "enquiring aright and giving light Upon

everything in accuracy and exactness" (Pistis, p. 17).

71

The Magdalen continues to "enquire aright" as Jesus speaks
of the Rulers of the Light and narrates the "fall" of
Pistis SOphia from the Light into the darkness of the
thirteenth Aeon, of her forsaking the "mystery" of the
thirteenth Aeon and hymning the "Light which is at the
Height" where she desired to go (Pistis, p. 22).

All the rulers of the twelve Aeons hated her because
she wanted to go above them into the Light, Jesus says, and
the triple power Self-willed in the thirteenth Aeon "lusted"
for her and surrounded her with his "material emanations,"
who “afflicted her" and took away her light (Pistis, p. 24).
Pistis SOphia, in her darkness, cried out greatly and said
a "Repentance" to the Light of Lights. "Deliver me, 0 Light,
because evil thoughts came unto me" (Pistis, p. 24), Pistis
80phia cries, and She recounts her "transgressions," her
fall into the "darkness of the chaos." She did "these things"
in her innocence, she says, mistaking the light of the triple
power Self-willed for the Light of the Lights, and She begs
to be delivered from the "matter of this darkness" (Pistis,
p. 25).

"I looked out for my partner," she calls to the Light,
"that he Should come and fight for me, and he came not.

And I was looking that he should come and give power to me,
and I did not find him. And (I) having sought after the
light, they gave to me darkness, and (I) having sought

after my power, they gave to me the matter," and Pistis SOphia

72

begs the Light to wreak vengeance on them (Pistis, pp. 25-26).
Jesus quotes in full SOphia'S long repentance, which draws
material from the Song of Songs and from David's Psalms and
which is filled with dualistic contrasts of dark with light,
matter with soul, mysteries of sexual union with mysteries

of Spiritual union. And the Magdalen "comes forward again"

to explicate SOphia'S repentance, for, She says, "my companion
of light hath ear and I hear in my power of light and was
wakeful the spirit which is with me" (Pistis, p. 27). AS she
concludes her lengthy explication, Jesus again praises her,
"Well done, Mariham the happy, the all-blessed of the Pleroma,
this woman whom they will call happy in every generation"
(Pistis, p. 28).

When Jesus finishes quoting Pistis SOphia'S second re-
pentance, Peter springs up and, with the same attitude toward
the Magdalen as that seen in the GOSpel of Mary and in other
apocryphal writings as well as in the fifteenth—century
German Easter play, says, "Lord, we are not able to bear with
this woman, saying instead of us: and She letting not any of
us speak, but she is speaking many times" (Pistis, p. 29).
Peter is then permitted to explain Pistis Siphia's second
repentance, and Jesus, saying "Well done, Peter," tells the
third repentance, which Martha, "in humility," explains
(Pistis, p. 51). The pattern continues throughout the twelve
repentances of Pistis Sophia, with "John the Virgin," Philip,

Andrew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Salome, Mary the mother of

75

Jesus, and the Magdalen taking turns to explain the repent-
ances.

Jesus tells of Pistis Sophia's crying out to him from
the thirteenth Aeon, "0 Light of Lights," and asking for
forgiveness. "I forsook the Place of the Height and dwelt
in the Place of the Chaos," She said (Pistis, p. 54).

Jesus explains that he purged all matter from Pistis SOphia,
saved her with a crown of light for her head, and her crown
of light united with his (Pistis, p. 57).

The Magdalen explicates Jesus' saving the Pistis Sophia
through an elaborate discussion of the "Powers" of David's
Psalm 84: 11 (Authorized Version: 85:10). The "Powers" that
she describes are "Mercy" and "Truth" who "met one another"
(Pistis, p. 58), and "Righteousness" and "Peace" who "kissed
one another." As she concludes, Jesus again praises "Mariham
the happy, this one who will inherit all the kingdom of the
Light" (Pistis, p. 59).

Mary the mother of Jesus offers an explanation of the
four "Powers" by telling an episode in which Jesus, "being
yet little," was in the vineyard with Joseph when the "Spirit"
came to her seeking Jesus and she, thinking it a "phantasm"
come to tempt her, bound the Spirit "unto the foot" of her
"place of lying" while she ran to the vineyard to tell Joseph
of the intruder (Pistis, p. 59). But Jesus heard her words
and understood and ran to the Spirit, which was like to him,

and embraced and kissed the Spirit and they "became only one"

74

(Pistis, p. 60). Jesus says to his mother, "Well done,"
and the Magdalen immediately eXplains further the meanings
of the four "Powers," and Jesus praises her, ”the inheritor
of the Light" (Pistis, p. 61). Once more Mary the mother
of Jesus comes forward and, kissing her son's feet and ask-
ing him not to be angry with her, explains the words yet
another time (Pistis, p. 61).

Costumed in medieval "mantelys" and speaking English
rather than COptic, David's "Powers" figure in fifteenth-
century plays. In, for example, The Castle of Perseverence
Mercy, Truth, Righteousness, and Peace, so elaborately
explicated by the Magdalen and Mary the mother of Jesus in
the second-century Pistis SOphia, walk onto the medieval
English stage as the "Four Daughters of God," concerned with
saving "Mankind."29

After Jesus quotes more of Pistis SOphia'S hymns to the
Light of Lights, with others giving eXplanations, the
Magdalen comes forward and says, "My Lord, my mind intelli-
gent is at every time, for me to come forward at every moment
and utter the explanation of the words which she (Pistis
SOphia) said. But I am fearing Peter, because he is wont to
threaten me, and he hateth our sex" (Pistis, p. 80).

Obviously, the Magdalen of the second—century Pistis Sophia

 

29The Castle of Perseverence, in Chief Pre-Shakegpearean
Dramas, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1924),
pp. 264-287. For the part played by the Four Daughters of
God in The Castle, see 11. 5150-5650.

 

75

is referring to the same Peter who, in the fifteenth-century

Erlauer Ostergpiel III, threatens to give her a clout on

 

the ear, another on the cheek, and a third on the neck, and
who complains about the “females" that run all over the
countryside.

When Jesus tells the Magdalen that no one can keep any-
one filled with the spirit from answering, she explicates
another of Pistis SOphia'S hymns (Pistis, p. 81). "Maria,
the Magdalene," later explains the meaning of seeking every-
thing in an exactness (Pistis, p. 91), and Jesus praises her
for seeking after a manner "in which it is worthy to seek."
He will, he says, reveal all to her in "joy" (Pistis, p. 92).
The Magdalen rejoices and asks further questions concerning
the mysteries. Jesus explains and tells her that he will
complete her with "every Pleroma,“ with “every Power" (Eigpig,
p. 92).

When "Maria the Magdalene“ again sprang up and eXplained
Ithe "mystery of the Light" (Pistis, p. 98), "the Savior
wondered greatly at the assertion of the words which she
saith, because She had become spirit quite pure" (Pistis, p.
99). Jesus says to her, "Well done, 0 pure spiritual Maria,
this is the explanation of the word." And the Magdalen tells
Jesus of the need to deliver all men from "Darkness," for,
She says, "not only are we compassionate of ourselves but
we are compassionate of all the race of mankind," and Jesus

feels great "mercy" for her, and she, rejoicing in "great joy,“

76

asks more questions concerning the mysteries Of the Light
and Of the Ineffable (Pistis, p. 100).

Jesus' explication Of the mystery Of the Ineffable
combines elements Of Neoplatonism and Eastern mystery
religions in a long catalogue Of Opposites, and when Jesus
concludes, the Magdalen worships at his feet and, weeping,
cries out that her brothers did not understand his words
(Pistis, p. 109). Jesus himself is, he concludes, that
Mystery (Pistis, p. 116). Jesus, impatient with Andrew who
remains "without knowledge," chides him (Pistis, p. 124)
and says that he came tO purify men Of their matter, and
once more he urges the disciples to renounce the world with
its matter, to seek and find the mysteries Of purification
(Pistis, p. 125). Jesus then, at the disciples' request,
forgives Andrew the "sin" Of his ignorance (Pistis, p. 126).

In the third document, a part Of the Books Of the Savior,
Jesus explains the "mysteries" Of restoring the dead to life,
of healing the sick, Of curing men Of demons, and warns the
disciples not to give the knowledge Of these mysteries to
anyone else (Pistis, p. 141). With Egyptian magic, beliefs
in Fate, and allegorical exegesis dominating the discourse,
Jesus and the Magdalen discuss the types Of sinners and
punishments inflicted on them by the "dragon Of outer dark-
ness" (Pistis, pp. 160-164), the nature Of Fate (Pistis, pp.
169-176), the mysteries Of salvation (Pistis, pp. 177-178).

The Magdalen is praised for her exegesis with "the four

77

meanings" Of the ways Of saving the soul from the "Counterfeit
Spirit" which is compelled tO Sin by Fate (Pistis, pp. 148-
149).

When the Magdalen Springs up to explain Jesus' words
during the discussion, Jesus addresses her as "0 spiritual
one Of pure light" (Pistis, p. 151, p. 155). The document
closes with Jesus telling her that he "despoiled" himself tO
bring the mysteries to purify men (Pistis, p. 178) and the
Magdalen telling Jesus that she and the disciples are "happy
beyond every man for these greatnesses which thou hast
revealed to us" (Pistis, p. 179).

The important role given the Magdalen in the apocryphal
works is again manifested in the last two documents Of the
manuscript, both documents also fragments Of the Books Of
the_§gyior. The fragments further exemplify attempts tO
incorporate Old religions into the new by mingling magic and
astrology with Christianity. Jesus' Opening prayer tO the
"Fatherhood of every fatherhood, the boundless Light" is a
mixture of Hebrew, Egyptian, and Persian words (Pistis, p.
180).

Jesus not only further emphasizes the necessity to for-
sake the mysteries of sexual intercourse for the mysteries
Of union with the Light but also tells a story Of "Sabaoth
indeed the Adamas" who, with his rulers, remained "working
in the intercourse" and therefore caused the "Father Of my

Father" to bind them into a "sphere" and put "Rulers over

78

them" (Pistis, p. 181). The rulers men call Kronos, Ares,
the Hermes, the Aphrodite, the Zeus. Jesus says that Ieou
bound in the Aphrodite a “Power" which he drew out Of the
Pistis SOphia (Pistis, p. 182).

As Jesus tells these things, the Magdalen kisses Jesus'
hands and, weeping, asks him tO reveal to her and the
disciples ways to escape "great punishments" on the roads of
the "Middle" SO that they will not be cut away from Jesus
(Pistis, pp. 182-185). Jesus has compassion and tells her
that he will reveal every mystery to "my brothers and my
beloved" (Pistis, p. 185). Jesus proceeds to describe the
rulers Of the Middle, who destroy souls by their "evil fire"
(Pistis, p. 184). The rulers include the "Paraplex" in the
shape of a woman, with hair reaching down to its feet
(Pistis, p. 185); the "Ethiopian woman, quite black“ (Pistis,
p. 185); and Hecate Of the three faces (Pistis, p. 186),
along with others. Under the rule Of these figures are
demons who cause men to lie, curse, kill, lust, wrong the
righteous, forget the poor, fornicate, commit adultery, and
"do intercourse continually" (Pistis, p. 186).

After Jesus' description Of these rulers Of the "Middle"
the disciples beg compassion for themselves and for all the
race Of mankind, and Jesus tells them not to fear because
he will make the disciples lords over all men (Pistis, p.
188). He hymns in the "great name," blesses them, breathes

into their eyes, shows them a great light, and performs a

79

magic rite with fire and vine wood, a cup Of water, two jars
of wine, and cakes (Pistis, pp. 188-189). He tells them to
"hide the mystery" and says that the "Name" in which is every
name is the great mystery and when it is spoken it will dis-
solve all evil powers (Pistis, pp. 191-192).

The efforts in this fragment to mingle Old mysteries
and magic with the new religion and to incorporate into
Christianity Old religious figures, even though the figures
become tempters, give further evidence Of the power held on
imaginations by the desire for continuity. And the blending
of Pistis SOphia with Aphrodite, along with the emphasis on
the necessity to forsake the "mysteries Of the intercourse,"
gives further evidence Of the paradoxical preoccupation
with and fear of sexual intercourse, Of the conflict which
comes from the dualistic view of matter as female and evil
and Of spirit as male and good. Again, tOO, in this apocryphal
work, the Magdalen's closeness to the Christ is clearly Shown.

In the other fragment Of the Books Of the Savior, the

 

Magdalen, "Mariham," Opens the dialogue with a question con-
cerning the punishments Of slanderers (Pistis, p. 195), but
soon Peter asks Jesus to “let the women be content unto
seeking, that we may also seek" (Pistis, p. 195). Jesus then
tells "Mariham and the women" to let the males also ask.

The males ask Jesus about punishments Of robbers, of the
proud, of blasphemers, Of "man who Sleeps with man," and of

an "Esau and Jacob“ mystery involving the eating Of a soup

80

containing sperm mingled with menstrual blood (Pistis, pp.
195-197). Jesus says that the last Sin is the greatest Of
sins and describes the punishments which will be administered
by demons to the sinners. The Magdalen asks a final ques-
tion concerning the "sinful man who discovers no mystery"
(Pistis, p. 198), and Jesus says that sinner will receive

all punishments at once. The disciples beg Jesus to have
mercy on them and save them from these punishments (Pistis,
p..199).

The Books Of the Savior and the Pistis Spphia Show,
then, man's concern with the problems Of evil and Of mortal-
ity and his attempt to resolve the problems through the
dualistic view which sees matter as dark, feminine, and evil
in conflict with Spirit seen as light, male, and good. TO
achieve the good and immortality, the story Of the fall and
redemption Of Pistis SOphia demonstrates, the "divine Spark"
must come to know itself and forsake the mysteries Of sexual
intercourse for the mysteries of union with the deity.

In the apocrypha's emphasis on the necessity to forsake
the mysteries Of sexual intercourse is implicit, if indeed
not explicit, the continuation into at least the second
century Of Christianity Of ancient fertility rites described
by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough_(one-volume edition,
p. 584 ff.) as "sanctified harlotry“ devoted to the "great
Mother Goddess Of Western Asia, whose name varied, while her

type remained constant, from place tO place." Pistis Sophia

81

ambiguously represents a Mother Goddess, "consort" Of Jesus,
and in her "fall" the evil Of "matter." Pistis SOphia is
Specifically named the “consort Of the Savior" in two

apocryphal works, the Epistle of Eugnostos and SOphia Jesu

 

Christi, as Carl Schmidt illustrates in his introduction tO
gistis Spphia. "The Son of Man agreed with SOphia, his con-
sort, and revealed himself in a (great light) as bisexual.
His male nature is called 'the Savior, the begetter Of all
things,‘ but his female 'Sophia, mother of all,‘ whom some
call Pistis."3°
The writers Of the apocrypha have, then, preserved in
the figure Of Pistis Sophia memories both Of the rites Of
"sanctified harlotry" and Of the great Mother Goddesses to
whom the rites were dedicated, and the Digby playwright has
also preserved in the literary figure Of the Magdalen of
the fifteenth century echoes both Of the fertility rites Of
"sanctified harlotry" and Of a Mother Goddess to whom the
rites were dedicated. Obvious attributes Of a Mother God-
dess are evident in the Digby play's heroine who not only
restores the queen Of Marseilles to life on the "rock of ston”
but who, more importantly, brings about the queen's concep-
tion of a child.

.Much like the Pistis SOphia, the heroine Of the Digby

play "falls" into prostitution and afterwards forsakes her

 

soCarl Schmidt, Pistis Sophia (Leipzig, 1925), p. xxi
ff. Quoted in NTA, I, 251.

 

82

worldly "valentynes“ whom She loved to "hals and kysse" tO
become Christ's Spiritual lover, her soul joyfully united
with the Christ in heaven. The converted Magdalen Of the
Digby play, like the Pistis SOphia, Speaks a "repentance”
and says a prayer to Christ the Light who delivers men from
darkness. And like the "wise" Magdalen Of the Pistis SOphia,
the Digby heroine evokes from the risen Christ the explica-
tion Of his role as a gardener and recounts to the king Of
Marseilles the creation Of the world. A "power" Of the
Pistis Sophia, whose ancestors must have included, along
with Wisdom of the Old Testament, an Athene, is evident both
in the Magdalen Of the fifteenth-century Digby play and in
Christ's "beloved" Of the second-century Pistis Sophia.

The Magdalen's strong and enduring appeal tO imagina-
tions manifests itself in myths shaped around the Mary
Magdalene Of the New Testament canonical gospels during the
early centuries Of Christianity as well as in the Digby
playwright's placing her in the role of heroine Of his
fifteenth-century Mary Magdalene. Both the shapers Of the
mythical Magdalen and the Digby playwright are, I think
homo ludens working on the borderline between jest and
earnest. Through their eclectic imaginations, the writers
Of the apocrypha create a companion for the "True PrOphet,"
a "female being" who, as we have seen in the apocryphal work

The True PrOphet, rules over the present world, "which is

 

like tO her," and through his eclectic imagination, the

85

Digby playwright re-creates, in "game and glee," the Magdalen
as the Christ's companion.

The Magdalen who appears in the Gospel Of John as the
woman who, lamenting the dead Christ, seeks him, and finding
him resurrected, rejoices, is, as we have seen, early identi-
fied with the prostitute who is the anointer Of the Christ,
and She is therefore identified with Mary Of Bethany who
anointed Jesus and so becomes not only the sister Of Martha
and Lazarus but also the 9pe_anointer Of the Christ. In
roles given her by the writers Of the apocrypha we have seen
further augmentation Of her closeness to the Christ. She is,
in the Gospel Of Mary, in the Pistis Spphia, and in the frag-
ments from the Books Of the Savior, Christ's companion, his
"beloved" whom Peter resents, the "pure spiritual one" who
understands the words Of Jesus and explicates them with an
exactness, the one who will inherit the light, Christ's
feminine counterpart, the Christian goddess Of wisdom.

The Magdalen, sister Of Martha and of Lazarus, prosti-
tute, Christ's anointer, Christ's companion, grows in
complexity as myths accumulate around the Mary Magdalene Of
the New Testament canonical gospels. The composite Magdalen
becomes a controversial figure amongst early Church Fathers,
and it is not until the end Of the sixth century, with POpe
Gregory's approval, as Victor Saxer points out (Le Culte,

p. 5), that the Magdalen as a prostitute, the anointer Of

Christ, the Sister Of Martha and Lazarus is accepted as the

84

same woman to whom the risen Christ first appeared, and then
only in the Western Church, where in the sixteenth century
the composite figure again becomes a subject of debate

among theologians.

Both the Magdalen of the Gospel Of John and the anointers
of Christ do, however, inspire Church Fathers during the
early centuries Of Christianity to interpret them symbolical-
ly and to place them in theology. Although the Church
Fathers' interpretations do not altogether account for the
literary figure of the Magdalen, they do affect the Digby
playwright's picture Of his heroine. TO deepen understand-
ing Of the literary figure, we examine one Of the most
important early interpretations Of the anointers Of Christ,
that Of Origen in his commentary and Homilies on the Song
Of Songs, and we look at an early interpretation Of the
Magdalen Of the Gospel of John, that Of Hippolytus, for the
interpretations Of these third-century writers live on into

the Middle Ages to color the literary figure of the Magdalen.

CHAPTER IV

ATTRIBUTES OF THE MAGDALEN DERIVED FROM
WRITINGS OF HIPPOLYTUS AND ORIGEN

Just as the writers Of the apocrypha tried to incorpor-
ate elements Of Older religions into Christianity, so the
early Church Fathers set out to demonstrate that the New
Testament was a fulfillment Of the Old Testament. They saw
Old Testament figures as foreshadowings Of New Testament
figures, and they saw the Magdalen, among other fulfillments
Of Old Testament figures, as a second Eve. AS Damien Vorreux
points out in Sainte Marie-Madeleine, quelle est donc cette
femme?, Hippolytus, along with others, saw the Magdalen Of
John's gospel finding Jesus, the tree Of life, in the garden
as a fulfillment Of Eve separated from the tree Of life in
the garden Of Eden.31 The conception Of the Magdalen as a
second Eve survives, with all its ambiguous implications,
into the Middle Ages to affect the literary figure Of the
Magdalen both in iconography and in literature. It is, for
example, no mere chance that the Digby playwright's heroine,
as the first Eve, waits for her lover in an arbor and, as

the second Eve, finds the risen Christ in the garden.

 

31Damien Vorreux, Sainte Marie-Madeleine, quelle est
donc cette femme? (Paris, 1965), p. 20.

 

85

86

Another very important influence not only on the
literary figure but also on the Mary Magdalene honored in
the medieval Roman Catholic Church is the identification Of
Christ's anointers with the Bride Of the Song Of Songs.
The identification, made by several early Church Fathers,
is most strikingly interpreted by Origen in his third-
century Commentary and Homilies on the Song Of Songs.
Although Origen, in the tradition Of the Eastern Church,
does not identify as one person the Magdalen, Mary Of Bethany,
and the "sinner" anointer Of the Christ, many Western Church
Fathers do attribute to the composite Magdalen Origen's
interpretations Of the anointers Of the Christ. The Magdalen's
festival day is, as the Roman missal demonstrates, celebrated,
when it is celebrated, with a part Of the Song Of Songs:
Surgam, et circuibo civitatem: per vicos et
plateas quaeram quem diligit anima mea; quaesivi
illum, et non inveni. Invenerunt me vigiles qui
custodiunt civitatem: Num quem diligit anima mea
vidistis? Paululum cum pertransissem eos, inveni
quem diligit anima mea, tenui eum, nec dimittam,
donec introducam illum in domum matris meae, et
in cubiculum genitricis meae. Adjuro vos,
filiae Jerusalem, per capreas cervosque camporum,
ne suscitetis, neque evigilare faciatis dilectam,
donec ipsa velit.

(Song Of Songs 5: 2-5)

87

(I Shall rise now, and go about the city, through the cross-
roads and the streets I will seek him whom my soul loves;
I looked for him, and I did not find him. The watchmen who
guard the city encountered me: Have you seen him whom my
soul loves? A little while after I went from them I found
him whom my soul loves, I held him and would not let him go
until I had brought him into my mother's house and into the
bedroom Of her who conceived me. I adjure you, daughters
Of Jerusalem, by the roes and the hinds Of the field, that
you neither awaken nor arouse love until he wishes.)
Also for the Magdalen's day are two verses from Song

Of Songs 8:

Pone me ut Signaculum super cor tuum, ut

Signaculum super brachium tuum, quia fortis

est ut mors dilectio, dura Sicut infernus

aemulatio: lampades ejus lampades ignis

atque flammarum. Aquae multae non potuerunt

extinguere charitatem, nec flamina Obruent

illam. Si dederit homo omnem substantiam

domuS suae pro dilectione, quasi nihil

despiciet eam.

(Song Of Songs 8: 6-7)

(Set me as a seal Upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm,
for loveimsstrong as death, jealousy as painful as the
inferno, its torches, torches Of fire and blazing flames.

Many waters cannot extinguish devotion, nor rivers destroy

88

it. Were man to give all his household goods for love, he
would be looked down on as nothing.)

The parallel between the Magdalen Of John's gospel
shown seeking the Christ and finding him and the lover Of
the Song Of Songs seeking her beloved and finding him is, Of
course, Obvious, but the total effect Of the Song Of Songs
on the literary figure Of the Magdalen is, I think, less
Obvious and more profound. However interpreted, the Song Of
Songs connotes, as it denotes, eroticism, an unashamed
eroticism, an eroticism frowned on by Judeo—Christianity but
still retaining a powerful hold on imaginations Of Jews and
Christians alike. And the Magdalen's appeal to imaginations
stems, at least in part, from a power similar tO that of the
Song Of Songs.

Only fragments Of Origen's Commentary on the Song of
Songs, and no parts Of the Homilies, survive in the original
Creek. A large part, however, Of the Commentary translated
into Latin in the fifth century by Rufinus and the two
Homilies translated into Latin by Jerome in the fourth century
make clear Origen's method Of interpretation of the Song of
Songs.32 The method, patterned after Rabbinical exegesis Of
the Song Of Songs, is based on the idea that layers Of mean-

ing are hidden beneath the surface meaning Of words or figures

 

32Rufinus' and Jerome's translations, as well as the few
Greek fragments Of Origen's Commentary, are in Migne, PG
XIII, cols. 55-216. I refer, in this study, to R. P. Lawson's
nicely translated and well annotated Origen, the Song Of
Songsy Commentary and Homilies (London, 1957).

89

or events, a method familiar to all students Of medieval
literature and commonly called the allegorical method. The
use Of the three-fold method of interpretation reflects, as
Lawson points out (Origen, p. 9), application of the Platonic
idea Of the tripartite man, "body-soul-spirit," to the
interpretation Of the written word.33 Origen tries at once
to reveal the layers Of meaning, the soul and the Spirit,
beneath the body Of the "letter" of the Song of Songs, and

to incorporate the old Song into Christianity.

Origen sees the Bride Of the Song Of Songs, as Lawson
Observes (Origen, pp. 15-14), as the "pre-existent Church,"
present from all time, which comes "up from the steppe Of
Paganism to receive her Bridegroom and the living water that
is to turn her arid lands into the fruitful paradise of the
second Adam and the second Eve; and to her is given the
mission Of becoming the Mother of GOd'S peOple resurrected to
new life through Baptism."

In his Commentary, Origen defines the Song of Songs as
an epithalamium, but it is, he says, a "drama Of mystical
meaning" (Origen, p. 21), and he urges that no one not free
Of "passion" read the Song Of Songs (Origen, p. 25), for it
will lead any man who "lives only after the flesh" tO

"fleshly lust" (p. 22). ’"Mortify your carnal senses,“ he

 

33Professor Arnold Williams reminds me of the fact that
Origen has a four-fold interpretation as well as a three-
fold interpretation, and Professor Williams suggests that the
four-fold interpretation would probably be flesh-body-spirit-
soul.

90

begs his audience (p. 79). Origen insists that there is
nothing "carnal" in the Song (p. 55), for Solomon, whom
Origen identifies as the Bridegroom, is a "type" Of Christ
(p. 51), and his Bride, the Queen Of Sheba, is Simultaneously
Mary, Christ's anointer (p. 160), the Church (p. 21), the
soul (p. 21), and the "daughter Of the mother Of us all,"
Jerusalem, who had to be purified Of false teachings that

She had learned living among the heathen (p. 114).

The scripture, Origen says, uses names applicable to
the "outer man" for the "inner man" (p. 28), and just as
illicit love may happen to the outer man so that he loves
a harlot or an adulteress SO it may happen to the inner man
(p. 50). Origen distinguishes Eros, carnal love, from
Christ, spiritual love, but says that both Christ and Eros
throw the dart which gives the "wound Of love" (p. 29),
Christ in the spirit, Eros in the flesh. -Darts from unseen
demons bring men to fornication, greed, and other Sins (p.
199), but the "sweet dart Of Christ's knowledge" makes the
"smitten" one burn with love for the Word, gives "health-
bestowing" wounds (p. 198).

Although one may speak Of having a passion for God,
Origen says (p. 55), the love that exists in one who loves
God is "charity," which is God, and charity, "in whomsoever
it exists loves nothing earthly, nothing material, nothing
corruptible since it is the "fount Of incorruption" (p. 55).

The soul has inner senses of sight, taste, smell, hearing,

91

which Christ satisfies (p. 164). When the Bride longs for
the kisses Of her lover, the Church-Soul-Mary (Of Bethany)
longs for the holy mysteries Of the Church, the Word of God
(p. 60). AS Origen comments on the Bride longing for the
Bridegroom, who must now and then leave her, he identifies
himself with the Bride and says that he tOO longs for the
Bridegroom (p. 280).

The soul must, Origen says, "know itself" and follow
sacred, not worldly, pursuits (p. 159). The "cosmetics" Of
the soul is the "Oil" which is "joy" (p. 75), or it is
Christ, the Ointment "which makes those who are anointed by
it to be Christs themselves" (p. 162). Origen explicates
the Bride who anoints the Bridegroom as both the Church and
the Mary who anoints the feet Of Jesus and wipes them with
her hair (p. 160), so that the whole Soul-Church is filled
with the fragrance of the Holy Spirit (p. 161).

Mary, the Sister Of Martha, is identified with one of
Solomon's "blessed" women who figures as “partakers Of the
Word," for she sat at Jesus' feet, hearing him, and was told
by Jesus himself that she had chosen the better part (p.
101). The literary figure Of the Magdalen, we recall, takes
on this attribute of the "partaker of the Word," Of the
"contemplatyff" who, in the Digby play, becomes a hermit to
gain "Spiritual strength," and the religious figure of the
Magdalen becomes the patron saint Of mystics during the

Middle Ages.

92

Although Origen reflects a dualistic view Of matter
and Spirit, he does not, as do many of the writers Of the
apocrypha, identify matter with the female and spirit with
the male. On the contrary, Origen tells men to love their
mothers, their Sisters, and their wives "in a special way,"
and to love every woman "in all purity," according to her
merits (p. 191). Charity, unselfish love, Origen teaches,
reckons all men as neighbors (p. 55). Origen further
emphasizes love in his homilies on the Song Of Songs.

In the second homily he says that one Of the emotions
Of the soul is love, and "we use love well if its Objects
are wisdom and truth," but when "love descends to baser
levels, then we love flesh and blood" (p. 284). Origen again
contrasts the "fleshly wound" with the "Spiritual wound" Of
love. "How beautiful, how fitting it is to receive a wound
from Love! One person receives the dart Of fleshly love,
another is wounded by earthly desire; but do you lay bare
your members and Offer yourself to the chosen dart, the

lovely dart; for God is the archer indeed" (p. 297).34

 

34Origen's interpretation Of Christ as the "archer,"

the Christian Eros, lives on to appear in a liturgical hymn
to be sung on July 22 in honor of the Magdalen. The Magdalen,
in a hymn by Saint Roberto Francesco Bellarmino (1542-1621),
is described as "wounded by love" of Christ, "Father Of
heavenly light," who with a glance lit a fire Of love in her
and thawed the ice Of her heart, SO that she ran to anoint
Christ's blessed feet."

Pater superni luminis,

Cum Magdalenam respicis,

Flammas amoris excitas

Geluque SOlvis pectoris

95

Jesus is, in Origen's second homily, identified as the
"son Of our sister, the Synagogue," and as "the husband Of
the Church" (p. 287), and in both homilies Origen identifies
Christ's anointers as the fulfillment Of the "type" Of the
Bride (p. 285 and p. 275). The Bride, who is black, is,
Origen says, becoming white; he urges his congregation to
"practice penitence tOO" SO that they may have "white souls"
(p. 276). "The breasts Of the chaste are not bruised,"
Origen emphasizes, "but the paps Of harlots are wrinkled
with folds Of loose Skin. iThe breasts of the chaste are
firm and round and rosy with virginity. Such receive the
Bridegroom-Word" (p. 288).

Origen, we see, in his explication Of the "mystical
meaning" of the Song Of Songs, identifies Christ's anointers
with the Bride of the Song, and although Origen does not
see the anointers as the Magdalen, Western Church Fathers,
accepting the popular identifications Of the Magdalen with
both the prostitute and the Mary who anointed Jesus, as well
as with the sister Of Martha and Lazarus, see the Magdalen
as the Bride Of the Song of Songs, Christ's sister-bride,
"soror mea sponsa." The identification of the Magdalen as
Christ's bride lives on both in the Mary Magdalene honored
by the Roman Catholic Church and in the literary figure of

the Digby play. Raymond-LeOpOld Bruckberger, for example,

 

Amore currit saucia

Pedes beatos ungere,...
The‘hymn is printed in Hymns Of the Roman Liturgy, ed.
Joseph Connelly (Westminster, Maryland, 1954), p. 214.

94

subscribes his twentieth-century "biography" of the Magdalen
"soror mea sponsa."35

And just as Origen could not avoid the use Of erotic
language in his exegesis of the Song of Songs so Bruckberger
could not avoid the use Of erotic language in his "life" Of
the beautiful courtesan who becomes Christ's lover. .Nor
could the Digby playwright any more escape the use Of erotic
language in his picture of the Magdalen as the Christ's lover
than in his picture of her as a "worldly" lover.

Although Origen emphasizes the Judeo-Christian ethic Of
charity, Of love of man for his fellowman, he is not re-
membered through the centuries for his teaching that charity
reckons all men neighbors; he is, instead, remembered for
his "mystical" identification Of Christ with the Bridegroom,
the Spiritual Eros, and of the Church-Mary-Soul with the
Bride of the Song of Songs.

"In all allegory there is," Henry Osborn Taylor points
out in The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, "mystery,
and in all allegory mysticism, with its inherent spirit of
contradiction and paradox, is implicit."36 The spirit Of
contradiction and paradox implicit in Origen's interpretation

Of the Song Of Songs shows up in Origen's failure to escape

 

35Raymond-Leopold Bruckberger, Marie Mgdeleine, soror
mea sponsa (Paris, 1952).

36Henry Osborn Taylor, The Classical Heritage of the
Middle Ages (originally published, 1901; Harper TorcthOk,
New YOrk, 1965), p. 102.

95

the use of erotic language and images in his attempt to
parallel the sensuous love Of the Bride and her Beloved
with the love of the Church-Mary-Soul and the Christ. And
the paradox, an erotic asceticism, inherent in mysticism,
lives in the iconographic and literary figure Of the
Magdalen.

The sensuality, the frank eroticism expressed and indeed
celebrated in the Song Of Songs no mystical, symbolical, or
Neoplatonic interpretation can completely hide. Nor can
Rabbinical and Christian allegorical exegesis as a means Of
incorporating the Old love song into Judeo-Christianity hide
the reality Of the ancient song's magic appeal to desires
deep in humanity.

The spell cast by the Song Of Songs on Jews and Christians
alike springs, I think, not from mystical interpretations
Of the "hidden meanings" Of the Song but rather from the
Song's own religious and universal power. Its universal power
is evident in the fact that, according to Theophile James
Meek, there are Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek parallels to
the Song of Songs,37 besides, as Franklin Edgerton shows, a

Hindu parallel.38 The religious power Of the Song Of Songs

 

37Theophile James Meek, "The Song Of Songs and the
Fertility Cult," in Song Of Songs, a symposium.by Max Leopold
Margolis and others, ed. Wilfred Harvey Schoff (Philadelphia,
1924), chap. V, p. 69.

38Franklin Edgerton, "The Hindu Song Of Songs," Song Of
Songs, chap. IV.

96

grows out Of its transcendence Of the fear of death through
the celebration Of life.

"In pre-modern societies," Mircea Eliade points out in
Rites and Symbols Of Initiationyythe Mysteries Of Birth and
Rebirth, "sexuality, like all the other functions of life,
is fraught with sacredness. It is a way of participating in

"39 The con-

the fundamental mystery Of life and fertility.
tinuity Of life on earth is evoked by the dramatized sexual
union Of man with woman. Meek argues convincingly that the
Song Of Songs originally represented the ritual wooing and
marriage Of a god and goddess for the revival Of life in the
world. The goddess, Mother Earth, whatever her name,
languishes for the heaven god (Meek, p. 60), searches for
him, finds him, and unites with him (Meek, p. 62) and so
revives the fertility Of the gardens, Of the vineyards, Of
the flocks, Of humanity. The ancient concept of nature's
seasonal death followed by joyous rebirth is transformed by
Judeo-Christian thought to become a part, according to Meek
(p. 49), Of the liturgies during Passover and Easter.

In the heart Of the Old fertility song, the Bride search-
ing for and finding the Bridegroom, sounds an echo Of the

lamentation and joy expressed by Isis as she Searches for

her brother-husband Osiris. Isis says, in part:

 

39Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols Of Initiation, the
Mysteries Of Birth and Rebirth (Published in 1958 under the
title Birthygpd Rebirth; Harper Torchbook, 1965), trans.
from French by Willard R. Trask, p. 25.

 

97

0 Beautiful Boy, come to thy house,

immediately, immediately. I do not

see thee, my heart weepeth for thee,

my two eyes follow thee about. I am

following thee about SO that I may see thee,

I wait to see thee, Beautiful Prince, 10,

I wait to see thee; 0 An, it is good to see thee.
Come tO thy beloved one, Beautiful Being triumphant:
Come tO thy Sister. Come to thy wife.40

It is the heart Of the Song of Songs which, as we have
seen, centers the Magdalen's festival day. And the Magdalen's
day was in several places during the Middle Ages, according
tO Victor Saxer (Le Culte, p. 54), celebrated during Easter,
coinciding with the Spring Equinox; on March 28 was held the
"feast Of her conversion." .

"It may be a far cry," Wilfred Schoff says, "from an
Oriental Goddess of Love with her many names, Ishtar,
Shulmanitu, Aphrodite, Venus, to the Daughter Of Jerusalem,
the Bride of Yahweh, the Holy Catholic Church," and Schoff
adds that it is also a far cry from Tammuz or Adonis to
Yahweh or the Christ but that the "connection Of both with

the original types is unbroken and unmistakable."41 The

 

4‘OPart Of the lamentation Of Isis from the "Mystery Of
Osiris at AbydOS," trans. by E. A. Wallis Budge in his
Osiris (London, 1911; new edition, New York, 1961), II, 60-61.

41Wilfred Schoff, "The Offering Lists in the Song Of
Songs and Their Political Significance," Song of Songs, chap
VII ppo 106-107 0

98

connection Of the Magdalen with a goddess Of love is also
unbroken and unmistakable, for when Origen connected Christ's
anointers with the Bride of the Song Of Songs he, though
quite unintentionally, contributed to the linking Of the
composite Magdalen, to be celebrated in the Middle Ages,

with an ancient fertility goddess.

Origen's interpretations Of Mary the sister of Martha
as the "partaker Of the Word," and Of the beautiful Ethiopian
Bride becoming "white" through penitence also survive in
later theologians' interpretations Of the Magdalen, and these
interpretations are represented in the medieval literary
figure. But the Magdalen becomes and remains a literary
figure, in large part, because She is linked in writers'
imaginations with an ancient goddess, a goddess both of love
and of wisdom.

The great goddess of ancient religions, as Erich Neumann
points out in his study Of the archetype The Great Mother,
"in the patriarchal development of the Judeo—Christian West,
with its masculine, monotheistic trend toward abstraction"
was "disenthroned" and "repressed."42 Neumann adds that the
goddess did, however, survive in Christianity through under-
ground doctrines. Certainly the great goddess, with all her
ambiguity, lives in the mythical Magdalen created around the

Mary Magdalene Of the New Testament canonical gospels.

 

42Erich Neumann, The Great Mother, an analysis of the
archetype, trans. from the German by Ralph Manheim, Bollingen
Series XLVII (2nd_edition, New York, 1965), p. 551.

99

The goddess survives in the literary figure of the Digby
play as a seductive goddess Of love, as a goddess Of wisdom,
as a protective goddess of life. .And it is, I think, as a
goddess Of life on this earth that the Digby heroine kisses
this earth "fervently" aSShe dies.

Although the survival into the Middle Ages Of the
Magdalen to whom early Christian imaginations gave attributes
Of ancient goddesses cannot be altogether traced, it may in
part be accounted for bythe survival in the human imagina-
tion Of ancient gods and goddesses themselves. Coinciding
in time with the survival Of the ancient deities is, we know,
the continuing life of the composite Magdalen in sermons of
Western Church Fathers who, through the centuries, use her
as an example Of the Christian penitent, the recipient Of
Christ's love and mercy, the first person to whom the risen
Christ appears, a second Eve, the contemplative soul, the
apostle to the apostles, the Church itself, Christ's sister-
bride.

The ways in which the ancient deities survived through-
out the Middle Ages have been treated by Jean Seznec in
The Survivgl Of the Pagan Gods. The gods survived, according
to Seznec (p. 11), through the use from the early Christian

43

period into the Middle Ages of Euhemerism. Euhemerus, in

the third century B.C., set forth the idea that gods were

 

4'3Jean Seznec, The Survival Of the Pagan Godsy the
Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism
and Art, trans. from the French by Barbara F. Sessions,
Bollingen Series XXXVIII (New York, 1955).

100

recruited from mortal men, and the idea was used by early
Christian writers, including Augustine, as a weapon against
Paganism (Seznec, p. 15). The gods were, however, also
placed in world history where they remained to become bene-
factors Of mankind (Seznec, p. 14). The twelfth-century
Peter Comestor's pOpular Historia scholastica, for example,
placed Isis in the role Of teacher of the alphabet and Of
writing to the Egyptians, Minerva in the role Of teacher Of
the arts, including the art of weaving (Seznec, p. 16),
Venus in the role Of teacher of the courtesan's art (Seznec,
p. 22).

"The pagan divinities," Seznec Observes (p. 149),
"served as a vehicle for ideas SO profound and so tenacious
that it would have been impossible for them to perish."

The Magdalen, during the early centuries Of the Christian
era, becomes, through eclectic imaginations Of the writers
Of apocryphal works and through Origen's "mystical" inter-
pretation Of the Song Of Songs, a vessel for ideas SO deeply
rooted in human thought that it would indeed have been im-
possible for them tO perish.

She is, I think, chosen as a vessel for these ideas
because she is, in John's gospel, shown as the woman closest
to the Christ; her role is archetypal, suggestive of every
fertility goddess of antiquity who searched for and found
the heaven god who could restore life to her and tO her

earth. The Madgalen embodies the ambivalent ideas Of the

101

feminine as the preserver and restorer Of life, as the
dangerous but fascinating seducer Of man, as the pure spirit
SOphia-Wisdom, all, as Neumann demonstrates in his study Of
the Great Mother, attributes Of the Great Goddess. And the
goddess, the feminine, is, as she has probably always been,
linked in humanity's imagination with the god, the masculine.
By Shaping myths around the Mary Magdalene Of the New
Testament canonical gospels, then, writers during the early
centuries of Christianity gave to the composite Magdalen
attributes Of the great goddesses Of antiquity and SO, within
the framework Of Christianity, not only fulfilled a desire for
continuity but also bequeathed to the Western world the

prototype for the literary figure Of the Magdalen.

CHAPTER V

FULFILLMENT OF THE PROTOTYPE OF THE
MAGDALEN IN THE MIDDLE AGES

vAlthough the prototype for the literary figure of the
Magdalen was created during the early centuries Of
Christianity, the Magdalen does not, so far as we can learn,
receive individual treatment in Western drama and art until
the twelfth century. It is in the century which Charles
Homer Haskins, in The Renaissance Of the Twelfth Century,
characterizes as a period Of "intensification of intellectual
life,"“ and which Steven Runciman, in The Medieval Manichee,
calls a "great age Of heresy"45 that the Magdalen emerges as
a literary figure in the West.

It is not, I think, altogether coincidence that the
Magdalen captivates the imaginations Of playwrights in the
century Of Eleanor Of Aquitaine and her courts Of love, of
the wandering scholars, Of the great Christian mystic Bernard

Of Clairvaux, Of the crusades.

 

44Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth
Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1927; 11th printing, Meridian
Books, New York and Cleveland, 1966), p. 16.

45Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee, a Study Of
Christian Dualist Heresy (New York, 1961), p. 125.

102

105

The Magdalen's appeal to playwrights in the twelfth
century coincides with the emergence Of dualistic ideas
similar to those we have seen in the early centuries Of
Christianity when the Magdalen myth tOOk its Shape. Runciman
observes in The Medieval Manichee (p. 118) that the crusades
carried Old Eastern dualism into the West, particularly into
France and Germany. We see enter the very places where the
Magdalen attracts eSpecial attention in the twelfth century
the Old dualistic rejection Of the material with its concomi-
tant emphasis on the spiritual. The dualistic view Of matter
and spirit as absolute Opposites is reflected both in an
increase in asceticism and in the Spread Of conflicting views
Of woman and Of Eros.

Ernst Robert Curtius in European Literature and the
Latin Middle Ages points out four views of Eros which domi-

nate the twelfth century.46

The ascetic ideal, represented
by Bernard Of Morlaix in De contemptu mundi, as Curtius
says, curses Eros and womankind. Bernard Of Morlaix, we
see, shares the view of early writers Of the apocrypha who
also held the world and woman-matter in contempt.
.Mysticism, represented by Bernard Of Clairvaux, who

wrote no less than eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs,

Spiritualizes Eros, as we have seen Origen do in his

 

\—

‘eErnst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the
Latin Middle Ages (Bern, 1948), translated from the German
by Willard R. Trask (Harper TorcthOk edition, New York and
Evanston, 1965), p. 122.

104

third-century commentary and homilies on the Song Of Songs.

Humanism, represented by Bernard Silvestris Of Tours,
who, Curtius points out (p. 112). turned to ancient Eastern
sources, consecrates Eros in his De universitate mundi.

In his universe, where "religion and sexuality mingle,"

woman is a generative force. Profligacy, on the contrary,
which Curtius exemplifies with the Latin poem "The Council Of
Love at Remiremont," debases Eros and mocks woman.

I would add another view of Eros to Curtius' list. It
is the view Of love which "The Council Of Love at Remiremont"
mocks. wIt is represented, of course, in the cult Of "Courtly
love" that came tO Provence in the eleventh century and
moved throughout the West during the Middle Ages. "Courtly
love" ritualizes and romanticizes Eros. Woman is idealized;
as the beloved, she is lord and master, "midonS," of her
devoted slave who is ennobled by his ritualized love for
her.47

All Of these conflicting views Of Eros and Of woman
Show up in the medieval literary figure Of the Magdalen.

We see her as a "courtly lover" trying to convert her audi-
ence to the ennobling "religion Of love," as a profligate
prostitute abandoned to Lechery, as the lover Of Christ the

spiritualized Eros, as an ascetic leaving the material

 

4"On courtly love, see, for example, C. S. Lewis,
The Allegory Of Love, a Study in Medieval Tradition (London,

1956, revised edition, 1955), Chapter I.

105

world, and as a generative force. .The humanist ideal of
woman as a generative force is, however, dominant in the
Digby playwright's heroine who, even at the end of her
thirty years Of ascetic life in the desert, fervently kisses
the earth as She dies. The medieval literary figure Of the
Magdalen is, then, as was the Magdalen Of the early
Christian period, a vessel for conflicting ideas.

By the time the playwrights isolate the Magdalen from
the other Marys Of the Quem quaeritis plays, Mary Magdalene
has become an important religious figure in the Western
Catholic Church. TO the religious figure have been attached
legends which are to affect the heroine Of the fifteenth-
century Digby Mappragdalene who goes to Marseilles as "an
holy apostylesse" and who becomes a hermit to gain "Spiritual
strength."

Victor Saxer has thoroughly treated the cult Of the
Magdalen in the West in his excellent study Le Culte de
Marie Madeleine en Occident, and he has touched on the cult
in the East in an article "Les Saintes Marie Madeleine et
Marie de Bethanie dans le Tradition Liturgique et Homiletique

Orientale."48

Saxer points out that the cult Of the Magdalen
originates in the East where she is first honored as one of
the "merphores," myrrh-bearers, who gO to the tomb to

anoint the Christ ("Les Saintes," p. 4).

 

48In Revue des Sciences Religieuses (Paris, 1958), Vol.
.XXXII, pp. 1-57--hereafter referred to as "Les Saintes."

106

The Magdalen is, however, by the seventh century
individually honored at Ephesus on July 22 ("Les Saintes,"
p. 50), for there had grown Up sometime between A.D. 449
and 590 ("Les Saintes," p. 57) a belief that her tomb was
next to the Seven Sleepers' Cave at Ephesus ("Les Saintes,"
p. 8). The "great and admirable" Magdalen, one liturgical
notice reports, "despite the weakness Of her sex," had,
after Christ's ascension, gone with John the Evangelist tO
“preach" at Ephesus where she, "being mortal," died on
July 22 and was buried near the Seven Sleepers' Grotto
("Les Saintes," p. 9). But her body was supposedly moved
to Constantinople in the late ninth or early tenth century,
and there tOO She was honored on July 22 ("Les Saintes,"

p. 9). An eleventh-century notice from a COptic Church
indicates that she was also honored in Egypt as one who had
preached there ("Les Saintes," p..11).

The linking Of the Magdalen with John at Ephesus may
derive from the much-copied but controversial Acts Of
.gpgp,49 An Obviously pOpular work, the Acts Of John com-
bines an adventure tale with unmistakable dualistic ideas,
and it includes a pastoral scene in which Jesus and the

disciples join in a round dance.

 

49Eusebius mentions the Acts of John, so it may date
from the third century (NTA, II, 214). A Latin version
was current in the fourth century; Augustine refers to it
(NTA, II, 201). Although the work was condemned by the
Nicene Council Of 787 (NTA, II, 192), Arabic copies were
made as late as 1524 (NTA, II, 195).

107

John, in the Agtg, is shown destroying the temple Of
Artemis at Ephesus and converting the peOple who are still,
John says, echoing Paul, "being corrupted" by their "ancient
mysteries." Accompanying John is "the virtuous prostitute"
(NTA, II, 245). John is also Shown, as he is about to die,
praying tO Jesus as "thou who hast kept me pure for thyself
and untouched by union with a woman; who when I wished to
marry in my youth didst appear tO me and say tO me, 'JOhn,

I need thee.'" John thanks Jesus for having rid him of the
"foul madness that is in the flesh" (NTA, II, 257).

From the Acts Of John, or a Similar source, must come
not only the linking of the Magdalen with John as a
"preacher" at Ephesus but also the medieval legend explaining
the reason for the Magdalen's having become a prostitute.
Even though the Digby playwright does not use the legend,
other medieval writers, including John Mirk, do. .Mirk says
in his Festial (p. 205) that, "as many bOkys tellyth," when
John the Evangelist should have married the Magdalen, Christ
bade John to follow him, "and SOO he dyd," and the Magdalen
was "wrath" and therefore gave herslf "all to lechery."

Just as the Gospel Of John sharpens the Magdalen's closeness
to Christ, SO pOpular legend closely links the Magdalen with
John.

Behind the picture of the Digby heroine as "an holy

apostylesse" are, then, the Eastern traditions Of the

Magdalen as a preacher, and behind the Eastern traditions

108

is the Magdalen Of the Apocrypha. Traditions do not, I sug-
gest, easily perish; they travel, sometimes disguised,
sometimes as stowaways. The Eastern traditions were taken
over by Aix-en-Provence in the early twelfth century when
Aix claimed to have been evangelized by the Magdalen in the
first century and to have her tomb (Le Culte, p. 108).

Aix was only one Of many French cities that honored
the Magdalen. Marseilles, believing that the Magdalen had
come from Aix to convert Marseilles from the worship of
antique deities, rebuilt in the thirteenth century a temple,
thought to be the temple Of Diana, and dedicated in the
rebuilt chapel an altar to the Magdalen (Le Culte, p. 244).
On the altar was a bas-relief in marble representing the
Magdalen preaching the Christian faith in Marseilles. At
this altar during Easter services, from the thirteenth
century into the eighteenth century, a procession chanted
in Provengal a song which recalled the Magdalen's conversion
Of the king and queen Of Marseilles (Le Culte, p. 245).

The tradition continued through the centuries, according to
Saxer, until the medieval song was SUppressed, and finally
mass was forbidden to be held in the building, and the
Magdalen-Diana chapel was demolished in 1781 (Le Culte, p.
245).

That the Digby playwright used the legend Of the
Magdalen's mission to Marseilles in his dramatization Of

her long life is indeed Obvious, and that the Digby heroine

109

retains attributes Of an antique goddess, in her bringing
about the queen's conception Of a child, in her preserving
the life Of the mother and child, we have earlier noted.
In the tradition Of the Magdalen's succession to Diana at
Marseilles, we see again the association in mankind's
imagination Of the Magdalen with the archetypal feminine
embodied in the great goddesses Of antiquity. We also see
support for a thesis develOped by Paul Saintyves in ng
Saints Successeurs des Dieux: "The cult Of the saints was
born out Of the pagan cult Of the dead and Of heroes, it
is," Saintyves says, "the rigorous prolongation" Of the
pagan cult.so

The medieval Magdalen not only replaces a Diana but
also fills a gap left in the imagination by the displacement
Of the antique goddesses. The pOpular linking of the com-
posite Magdalen with the goddess Diana, a protector Of woman
and Of life, affects, whether directly or indirectly, the
heroine Of the fifteenth-century Digby play.

The Magdalen Of the Digby play is directly affected by
another medieval addition to the mythical Magdalen. Attached
tO the Magdalen was part Of the legend of Mary of Egypt, a
charming prostitute who, according to tradition, became a
hermit and was fed by angels and was clothed only in her

long hair during her forty—seven years in the desert.

 

soPaul Saintyves, Les Saints Successeurs des Dieux
(Paris, 1907), p. 406.

110

Although Mary Of Egypt continued to be honored, the Magdalen,
considered to be the first hermit, became the patron saint
Of the many medieval Christian mystics who became hermits
(Le Culte, p. 126).

An Old English Martyrology,51 written about A.D. 850,
tells Of the Magdalen's having, after Christ's ascension,
such a "great longing" for Christ that "she could nO longer
bear tO lOOk on any man" and therefore went "into the desert
and lived there thirty years unknown tO all men." She ate
nO human food, the legend tells us, but was daily taken
to heaven by angels where "she heard something of the
heavenly joys" and so "she never hungered nor thirsted."

A "mass priest" found her as she was dying and buried her,
the legend concludes, "and many miracles happened at her
grave."

The legend Of the Magdalen as a hermit is also found

52

in a Vita eremitica beatae Mariae Magdalenae, which Saxer

 

believes probably came from Italy in the ninth or tenth
century (Le Culte, p. 126). TO the title was added in the
twelfth century the designation of the Magdalen's place Of
hermitage as the grotto, Sainte-Baume, in the diocese Of
Marseilles (Le Culte, p. 151). From the legend, incorporated

into Jacobus a Voragine's life of the Magdalen in the

 

ledited by George Herzfeld (London, 1900), EETS 116,
p. 127.

52Bibliotheca Hagiogrgphica Latina (Brussels, 1898-
1901, reprinted 1949), pp. 5455-5656.

111

Legenda Aurea in the thirteenth century, comes not only the
Digby playwright's dramatization Of the Magdalen's life as
a hermit but also the many and varied iconographic repre—
sentations of the Magdalen as a hermit. And Victor'Saxer
considers the Vita eremitica Of the Magdalen, which appeared
in many versions and was widely read during the twelfth
century, the "literary" cause Of the popularity Of hermit
life during the Middle Ages (Le Culte, p. 126).

The medieval cult Of the Magdalen was, however, by no
Ineans confined to mystics. Saxer points out that throughout
England, France, and Germany, with rapid multiplication Of
Magdalen relics and sanctuaries during the eleventh century,
Mary Magdalene soon replaced the apostles and even Mary the
mother Of Jesus as a venerated saint (Le Culte, p. 68).
Exeter, claiming to have a finger Of the Magdalen, built in
the tenth century the first Western sanctuary dedicated to
Saint Mary Magdalene (Le Culte, p. 54). Vézelay, claiming
to have the body Of the Magdalen, was, however, in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries the center Of pilgrimage in
honor Of the Magdalen. It was at Vézelay during Easter in
1146 that a miracle involving Louis VII and Eleanor Of
Aquitaine was attributed to the Magdalen. .In preparation
for the second crusade, King Louis and Queen Eleanor had
drawn such a crowd for a grand outdoor ceremony at Vézely
that the platform collapsed, and word of the Magdalen's
having saved the King and the Queen and all the crowd from

injury spread across France (Le Culte, pp. 94-95).

112

After the second crusade, reports Of Magdalen miracles
multiplied, liturgical celebrations Of Saint Mary Magdalene
increased, and the popular appeal of the Magdalen grew and
manifested itself in varied monuments to her. In those
monuments, which affect the literary figure Of the Magdalen,
we again see evidence Of her having been given attributes
Of a goddess, Of a "Lady Of Transformation."

The goddess as a Lady Of Transformation, Erich Neumann
points out in The Great Mother (p. 286), transforms matter
into a higher, spiritual principle. She is therefore the
goddess of wine. The Magdalen takes on attributes Of the
Lady of Transformation, for, as we noted at the beginning
of this study, before the end Of the twelfth century a vine-
yard at Lyon was named for her (Le Culte, p. 247). And
there is, Professor Arnold Williams points out, an excellent
wine in the Italian Tyrol called Santa Maddelena. It is in
the Middle Ages that the Magdalen becomes the patron saint
of "winegrowers."

The Digby playwright, we recall, places the Magdalen
in a tavern where she Sips wine, a "good restoratyff" tO
relieve her from "stoddys and hevynes," and praises the
taverner as a "groom Of blysse" who is to her courteous
and kind. The Magdalen's role in the tavern scene again
exemplifies, I think, the Digby playwright as homo ludens
working on the borderline between jest and earnest. The

scene between the taverner Of Jerusalem, who extols his

115

fine European wines, and the Western winegrowers' patron
saint, who delights in the wine, probably evoked in the
fifteenth-century audience the unique delight that springs
from experiencing recognition and surprise.

The pOpular identification Of the Magdalen with the
archetypal mysteries Of the feminine is further manifested
in her patronage of perfume-manufacturers, pharmacists,
glove-makers, hair-dressers, podiatrists, comb-makers,
foundrymen, barrel-makers, tawers, weavers, and gardeners.
The Magdalen's role as a patron Of the gardeners links her
with ancient goddesses Of the earth and Of fertility. Her
role as the patron Of the weavers links her with all the
great goddesses of antiquity, for the great goddesses, as
Neumann points out (p. 277), forever linked with the web
of life, are weavers, as well as Spinners.

The honoring Of the Magdalen by medieval craftsmen,
food-growers, and wine-makers clearly indicates the pOpular
attribution Of characteristics Of antique goddesses tO the
Magdalen. And between the antique goddesses and the patron
saint Of the Middle Ages are the intermediary figures Of the
Bride Of the Song Of Songs and the Magdalen-SOphia-Athene--
the "spiritual" Mariham Of the Apocrypha.

.It is the "spiritual" Magdalen, transformed from a
prostitute, who inspires the establishment, during the
Middle Ages, Of religious orders for reformed prostitutes.

The penitent prostitutes, called in Germany ”Weissfrauen"

114

and in France "Dames Blanches," because they wore white,
according tO Louis Réau (Iconographie, II, 849), eSpecially
honored the Magdalen. The wide—spread appeal Of the
Magdalen during the Middle Ages is further manifested in
the fact that many women were, from at least the twelfth
century on, given the name Of the Magdalen. Cities and
streets, colleges and hospitals, as well as many churches,
were, as we have earlier Observed, named for her.

Although the peak Of the Magdalen cult was, according
to Saxer (Le Culte, p. 525), reached in the thirteenth
century, the Magdalen continued tO be especially honored
in the Roman Catholic liturgy until the sixteenth century.
Among the many sermons devoted tO her as a model of the
Christian penitent, Of the contemplative soul, Of love, of
the Church, Of an apostle to the apostles, Of the second
Eve, are those sermons on the Song Of Songs by the great
twelfth-century mystic Bernard Of Clairvaux.

.Through sermons by Bernard of Clairvaux the complex
Magdalen becomes, as the anointers Of the Christ had been
in Origen's third-century commentary and homilies on the
Song Of Songs, the Bride, "soror mea sponsa," Of the Song
Of Songs. The Bride is, as she had been in Origen's works,
also identified with the Church and with the Soul. The
fifteenth-century Digby playwright, whose imagination is
most eclectic if not always syncretic, reflects both a

familiarity and a sympathy with specific interpretations set

115

forth in Saint Bernard's sermons, and the playwright re-
flects tOO his awareness Of Saint Bernard's identification
of the Magdalen with the Bride Of the Song Of Songs.

The Magdalen echoes Bernard's exPlication Of "white"
when she expresses her sudden realization Of the meaning Of
white, the color of the angels' clothing, as "tokening
meekness." Bernard Of Clairvaux in Sermon XXVIII on the
Song Of Songs, following Origen's explication of the beauti-
ful but "black" Bride Of the Song of Songs, elaborates on
the "black" heart filled with Sin in contrast with the
"white" heart filled with humility, and Bernard specifically
identifies white with the color Of angels' vestments.53

Although the Digby playwright's use of Bernard's expli-
cation may seem extraneous, the Digby playwright, as well
as some of the audience, knew that penitent prostitutes, Of
whom the Magdalen was the patron saint, had been from the
thirteenth century on, called Dames Blanches, Weissfrauen,
.White Ladies. The Magdalen's exclamation, when she sees
the angels clothed in white, held, then, a particular delight
for the "sensible folk" in the fifteenth-century audience.
"Sensible folk in the Middle Ages," as G. G. Coulton remarks

in Medieval Faith and Symbolism, "were a great deal less

medieval than some Of their more enthusiastic modern

53Patrologlae Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1854),
Vol. 182, cols. 921-928--hereafter referred to as MPL.

116

champions."54 The Magdalen's audience may have smiled when
they heard the patron saint Of the White Ladies say:
0, gracyus god, now I vndyrstond!
thys clothyng Of whyte is tokonyng Of mekeness.
now, gracyus lord, I woll not wond,
yower preseptt to Obey with lowlynesse.
(11. 1607-1610)

The Digby playwright also draws the explication Of
Christ the gardener from an especially joyous sermon,
Sermon XL (MPL 184, 207-214), by Bernard Of Clairvaux.

The sermon explicates the words from Song Of Songs 5: 1:
"Veni in hortum meum, soror mea sponsa," Come into my
garden, sister my bride. The Digby playwright, giving the
Magdalen a role similar to the role given her in the second-
century Pistis SOphia, has his heroine, the patron saint Of
gardeners who mistakes the Christ for "Symoyd" the gardener,
evoke explication of Christ as the gardener Of men's hearts
from the Christ himself. And the Digby heroine, in her
expression Of joy for the "dear worthy emperor" Christ's
"tydyng," which will make all those who "reign after us"
joyous tOO, not only echoes the joy of the twelfth-century
mystic Bernard Of Clairvaux but also recalls the.Magdalen
Of the Pistis SOphia, the "Mariham the happy" who was com-

,passionate for all mankind.

54G. G. Coulton, Medieval Faith and Symbolism (Oxford,
1.928; Harper Torchbook, 1955), p. 249.

117

Bernard, again elaborating on Origen, equates the
Magdalen-Church-Bride with the contemplative soul in con-
trast with Martha the figure Of the active soul, and, in
Sermon LVII (MPL 185, 1050-1055), praises the divine love
Of the Christ that leads tO contemplation. .The Digby play—
wright also uses, as we have seen, the tradition Of the
Magdalen as Christ's lover and the contemplative. .The
Digby playwright shows, however, the Magdalen and the Christ
both as a "repast contemplatyf," for just as the Magdalen
blesses the Christ, after he has forgiven her Of her
"wrecchednesse," as.a "repast contemplatyf" SO the king Of
Marseilles hails the Magdalen as "repast contemplatyff."

The Digby heroine is, as was the Magdalen Of the Apocrypha,
Christ's feminine counterpart.

Another similarity between the Digby heroine and Saint
Bernard's Bride Of the Song of Songs is reflected in the
Digby playwright's emphasis on the Magdalen's contrition
after she has anointed Christ's feet at Simon's house.

While Bernard, in Sermon X (MPL 185, 819-824), identifies
the Ointment used by the Bride-Magdalen-Soul with contrition,
the Digby playwright has Jesus praise the Magdalen, after
she has anointed him, for being "expert" in contrition.
Bernard Of Clairvaux also emphasizes, as did Origen, in
Sermon XXII (MPL 185, 875-884), the love and desire Of the
Bride-Magdalen—Church-Soul for the Bridegroom-Christ. The
Digby playwright dramatizes the love Of the Magdalen for the

Christ as well as the love of the Christ for her.

118

The Digby playwright also parallels Bernard Of Clairvaux,
who expresses in sermons and meditations his ecstatic devo-
tion to Mary the mother Of Jesus, in his giving Jesus the
rhapsodic hymn to his mother, the Moon, whose joys "no clerk
can write," but the Digby playwright shows Jesus, even as
he hymns the Virgin, remembering the "kindness" Of his
"servant" the Magdalen. And the Digby heroine, an angel
tells her, is to be honored with joy and reverence, enhanced
in heaven above virgins.

Although Bernard of Clairvaux is well known for his
mystic devotion to Mary the Virgin, he is, through his
following Origen's example Of linking Christ's anointers
with the Bride Of the Song Of Songs, important in the renewed
literary interest in the Magdalen, Christ's "sister-bride,"
whose prototype was created in the early centuries Of
Christianity. The Magdalen Of the fifteenth-century Digby
play fulfills the third-century Origen's explication of the
Soul—Mary, who, coming to "know itself," follows "sacred
pursuits" and becomes through the "cosmetics" of Christ-joy
a Christ herself. The Digby heroine, like the second-century
Pistis SOphia, receives from Jesus "by right enheritance" a
"crown to bere" with the Christ in heaven. And the Digby
heroine, like the Bride Of the Song of Songs, retains char-

acteristics of goddesses Of antiquity.

CHAPTER VI

EXPANSION OF THE MEDIEVAL FIGURE OF THE MAGDALEN
IN SELECTED PLAYS AND ICONOGRAPHY

SO pOpular and so many-Sided a figure inevitably cap-
tured the imaginations Of playwrights and artists during
the complex century Of an "intensification of intellectual
life," Of the wandering scholars, Of the crusades. The
Magdalen, as a medieval literary figure, becomes, much as
she had been in the early Christian period, a vessel for
ideas tOO profound and too tenacious to perish. From the
twelfth-century Easter plays to the fifteenth-century Digby
Mary Magdalene, the literary figure expands and iconographic
representations Of the Magdalen multiply.

An exhaustive study Of the Magdalen in either iconog-
raphy or literature remains yet to be done, but to begin to
appreciate the representations Of the Magdalen in iconography
and the expansion Of the literary figure between the twelfth
and the fifteenth century, we need here examine only three
plays that clearly illustrate the Magdalen's expanded role
in the drama and to consider a few Of the numerous iconOg-
raphic representations of the many-sided Magdalen. -We look,

then, at the Magdalen's role in the twelfth-century Easter

119

120

play from Tours, in the thirteenth-century Passion play from
Benediktbeuren, and in the fifteenth-century Jean Michel's
Mystere de la Passion.

In the first expansions Of the literary figure we see
an attempt to isolate the Magdalen as the woman closest to
the Christ, the same attempt that we Observed in the apocry-
phal writings of the early Christian period. The Qgem.
quaeritis play is expanded to include the recognition scene
between the Magdalen and the resurrected Christ, the scene
pictured in the GOSpel Of John, and the Magdalen is given by
the playwrights extended songs of lamentation for the Christ.
In the twelfth century, then, playwrights restore to the
Magdalen Of the drama the attribute Of the archetypal figure
Of the earth goddess lamenting the heaven god.

A particularly lovely lament is given the Magdalen in
the twelfth-century play Of Tours. Much Of the charm Of
the Magdalen's lament springs from the archetypal character
Of laments themselves. The twelfth-century playwright well
understood the dramatic power Of laments, which had been
related tO religious ritual Since at least four thousand
years before Christ.55 The Tours playwright knew also the
dramatic power of the composite Magdalen and her identifi-

cation with the Bride Of the Song Of Songs. The long lament

 

55On laments in religious ritual see, for example,
Peter Crossley-Holland, "Non-Western Music," in The Pelican
History Of Music, ed. Alec Robertson and Denis Stevens
(Baltimore, Maryland, 1962), I, 15-118.

 

 

121

given the Magdalen by the Tours playwright links her at once
closely with the Christ and with the Bride Of the Song of
Songs.

The Magdalen, wringing her hands and weeping, "plausis
manibus, plorando," Speaks Of her misery, Of her great grief
for the death Of Jesus Christ, whose mercy in forgiving her
Of her "grave sins" she holds in memory.56 The Tours play-
wright momentarily breaks the unity of his picture Of the
lamenting Magdalen by trying to place her in the twelfth—
century setting of the joyous celebration Of "this day" Of
Easter. But Obviously less concerned with the specific day
than with the lamentation of his literary figure, he has the
Magdalen, after She thanks Jesus, the king Of all the angels,
for having been "killed for us" ("pro nobis occisus est"),
and praises the greatness Of "this day" to be celebrated in
joy and in remembering that Jesus arose from the dead (11.
146-148), resume her lament.

-She further mourns the death Of "Jesus Christ, God and
man," her hope, "the living health Of the world," and asks
him to remember her and his friend Lazarus. She hopes, she
says, to see Jesus living, with the sceptre Of the Empire,
and again lamenting her grief, she expresses her helpless-
ness: "What shall I do? What shall I say?"

Deus et homo! Deus et homo! Deus et homo!

 

56Text of the play is in Karl Young, The Drama of the
Medieval Church (Oxford, 1955: revised edition, 1962), I,
458-447.

122

Ihesu Christe, tu spes mea, salus viva seculi,
Memorare Magdalene tuique amici Lazari.
Te vivum spero videre cum sceptro imperii.
Me misera! me misera! me misera!
Quid agam? Heu! tristis, quid dicam?
(11. 151-156)

The scene dramatized in the gpem_guaeritis plays
follows: the angel asks the woman why she weeps, whom she
seeks, and tells her and the other Marys that Christ has
arisen. But again the Magdalen, lifting her hands toward
heaven, "levet manus ad celum" (YOung, I, 444), laments and
begs her Lord not to abandon her, tO appear to her, to have
pity on her, "miserere Magdalene“ (11. 165-166), as he did
when he forgave her Of her Sins. And in her grief, she
faints.

The other Marys come to her, and with Mary Jacobi hold-
ing the Magdalen by her right arm and Mary Salome holding her
by her left arm, they lift the Magdalen up from the earth
and tell her, "dear Sister," that her grief is too great.57

The Magdalen, echoing both the Gospel Of John and the
Bride Of the Song Of Songs, says: "My heart is burning;

I long to see my Lord; I search and I do not find where they

have placed him."

 

57"Deinde veniat Maria Iacobi et sustentet brachium
dextrum, et Maria Salome per sinistrum et levet de terra
Mariam Magdalenam" (Young, I, 444).

125

Ardens est cor meum; desidero videre
Dominum meum; quero et non invenio
ubi posuerunt eum.

(11. 170—171)

The poetic laments and the dramatic action given the
Magdalen by the Tours playwright demonstrate both the
attempt to isolate the Magdalen as the feminine figure clos-
est tO the Christ and the desire to suggest the Bride Of the
Song Of Songs in the literary figure of the Magdalen.

The moving scene Of the Tours figure of the Magdalen
fainting from her grief for the death Of Jesus and being
comforted by the other Marys appealed to a twelfth-century
artist who carved the scene in stone. The work appears in
the Chapel Of Modena in Italy, and Emile Male believes that
it was carved by a Provencal artist who knew the Tours play
well.58

The Magdalen in the sculpture has, we see from a photo-
graph of the work in Mfile's L'Art Rellgieux du XIIe Siecle
(p.157, fig. 116), fainted on the sepulchre itself. Her
head lies on the tomb, her hands caress the tomb. .The two
other Marys stand on either side Of her, looking down on her
with pity and trying to comfort her. Mary Salome's hand
rests gently on the Magdalen's Shoulder and seems to be

tenderly patting the grief-stricken Magdalen. .Although the

 

58Emile Male, L'Art Religieux du XIlf Siecle (Paris,
1922), pp. 156-157.

124

Magdalen's face is not individualized in this twelfth-
century iconographic representation Of her, her face,
exhausted by grief, centers the artist's work and draws
attention to her as an individual woman grieving for the
Christ, the God whom She, like the Bride Of the Song Of
Songs, has sought and not yet found. .Neither the artist
nor the Tours playwright ignores, I think, the archetypal
element in the figure Of the Magdalen. Although the Magdalen
Of the Tours play is not yet the complex heroine of the Digby
play, she is a literary figure expanded beyond the Mary
Magdalene Of both the New Testament canonical gospels and
the Quemgggaeritis plays.

Coinciding with the expansion Of the Magdalen's role
in the Tours play is the expansion Of the play itself.
Included in the Tours playwright's additions to the Qgem_
guaeritis plays is a scene Showing the three Marys as they
go, lamenting, to buy Ointment from the "Mercator" and his
young apprentice. The merchant scene simultaneously places
a potentially comic figure in the Easter play and mingles
a contemporary medieval figure with New Testament figures.
The merchant scene becomes, particularly in later medieval
German plays, a long and highly farcical scene. In, for
example, Das Erlauer Ostergpiel lll, in which we earlier
Observed the dramatization Of Peter's resentment of the
Magdalen, the Merchant, the Merchant's Wife, and "Rubin"

indulge in a lengthy bickering match.

125

As the three Marys, in the Tours play, approach the
merchant, they lament the death Of Jesus. The Magdalen
begins:

Omnipotens Pater altissime,

angelorum rector mitissime,

quid faciunt iste miserrime?

Heu! quantus est noster dolor!

(11. 21-24)

(Omnipotent Father most high,

most sweet head of the angels,

what have your sufferings brought?

0! how great is our dolor!)
The two other Marys lament, with the refrain "Heu! quantus
est noster dolor!" and Mary Salome says that they should
buy Ointment tO anoint the body Of Jesus as protection
against worms.

The merchant, a shrewd business man, knows the right
chord to sound tO the lamenting women. He invites them to
buy his Ointment to anoint the "sacred body of the Lord,"
because, he tells the Marys, if they use his ointment to
anoint the body, it can no more putrefy, nor can the worms
eat it.

Quod, si corpus possetis ungere,
non amplius posset putrescere,
neque vermes possent commedere.

(11. 57-59)

126

The Marys ask the merchant how much his Ointment costs, he
asks them how much they want tO buy and finally offers them
the Ointment at a ridiculously high price, which the Marys
accept "libenter," willingly (1. 65). The Marys, lamenting,
take the Ointment to the sepulchre and are told by an angel
that they do not need the Ointment, "Non eget unguentum"

(1. 78), for Jesus has arisen.

The merchant scene, like the scene Of the Magdalen
fainting at the tomb, appealed to the artist who did the
work in the chapel at Modena. .The scene, reproduced in
MSle's L'Art Religieux du XIIe Siecle (p. 156, fig..115),
shows the three Marys standing beside the merchant's counter
while the Older, bearded merchant weighs the Ointment on
his scale, and his young apprentice, smiling, looks on,
apprently pleased with learning the tricks Of the trade.
Although the merchant scene is not, in the text Of the Tours
play, explicitly comic, it could be presented as comic.

The mingling of the potentially comic with the serious,
Of the contemporary medieval figures with the Biblical
figures, links the twelfth-century playwright with the
fifteenth—century Digby playwright as homo luden§_working
on the borderline between jest and earnest. Both playwrights,
while they dramatize the event central to the Christian
after-life, turn their eyes, and the eyes Of their audiences,
toward life on this earth and toward peOple living in this

world where the comic and the serious mingle, where worms

127

can gnaw even a "sacred body" buried in the earth. Both
playwrights emphasize the "humanity" Of the Christ, the
man-God, and both place the Magdalen close to the man-God.

The Tours playwright, through giving the Magdalen
extended laments and dramatic action revealing her grief,
shows her closeness to the Christ, but since Christ himself
makes only a brief appearance in the Tours play, Christ's
love for the Magdalen is not vividly shown, as it is in
the Digby play. Although the twelfth-century figure Of
the Magdalen has not the complexity of the fifteenth-century
Digby heroine, she is, in the Tours play, isolated from
the other Marys for special treatment as the once-sinful
woman most grieved by the death Of the Christ. And the
Magdalen Of the Tours play echoes the Bride Of the Song Of
Songs as she, lamenting, searches for the Christ.

The figure Of the Magdalen begins, then, in the Tours
play, tO fulfill the prototype Of the Magdalen created dur—
ing the early centuries of Christianity. She inspires the
dramatist tO write extended poetic laments and attracts
the attention Of artists. By the thirteenth century she
attracts the attention Of the wandering scholars who write
for the "worldly" Magdalen goliardic songs. The Magdalen
herself becomes a contemporary medieval figure, and yet she
retains her archetypal attributes.

The Magdalen's worldly life, implicit in the Tours play

when the Magdalen mentions Jesus' having forgiven her Of

128

her "grave sins,l is made explicit in the thirteenth-
century Benediktbeuren Passion play. By dramatizing her
life as a prostitute and her subsequent repentance, the
Benediktbeuren playwright pictures the Magdalen as a complex
figure capable of change. The vitality Of the literary
figure is therefore augmented by the Benediktbeuren play-
wright's dramatization of the Magdalen's "Weltleben."

The play itself is a lively music-drama, and the Magdalen
sings directly to the audience goliardic songs, mostly in

German, the language Of her audience.59

The Magdalen is, then,
a figure contemporary with her audience. But she is simul-
taneously a timeless figure, for she represents an attribute
Of the archetypal feminine, the seductive woman, a Venus.

Carl Orff, aware of both the medieval-contemporary and the
timeless characteristics in the Benediktbeuren Magdalen and

her music, incorporated into his twentieth-century composi-

tion Carmina Burana the Magdalen's vernacular carpe diem

 

 

song, the rollicking "Chramer, gip die varwe mier," sung by
the Magdalen as she adorns herself to seduce the young men
and urges the men and women in her audience to practice the
"ennobling" art Of love.

As the bold seducer of the "iungen man," the Magdalen
plays a comic role. The comic element stems from the

Benediktbeuren playwright's mingling, in light-hearted

 

59Text Of the play is in Karl Young's The Drama Of the
Medieval Church, I, 518-555.

129

parody, the contemporary with the omnitemporal, blending
the "courtly love" advocate with the archetypal dangerous
but fascinating seducer Of men.

Although her seduction songs are in the vernacular,
her theme song is a Latin lyric, "Mundi delectatio," which
she sings three times, twice in the rejection Of the Good
Angel's appeal to her to leave her worldly lovers and follow
Jesus. The song, with its word—play and lilting abandon,
introduces the Magdalen to the audience as a woman delight-
ing in the world, the SOphisticated world, with its pleasing
and admirable "conversatio" to be enjoyed, its "wantonness"
not to be shunned. And the Magdalen makes clear that she
has a body which is to be adorned.

The vitality of the song eludes my translation, but I
feel sure that the lively humor was not lost on the thirteenth-
century audience who heard the Magdalen sing three times her
hymn to "worldly joy." She sings:

Mundi delectatio dulcis est et grata;
Eius conversatio suavis et ornata.
Mundi sunt delicie, quibus estuare
VOlO, nec lasciviam eius devitare.

Pro mundano gaudio vitam terminabo;
Bonis temporalibus ego militabo.

Nil curans de ceteris corpus procurabo,
Variis coloribus illud perornabo.

(11. 42-49)

150

As she vows, "In worldly joy, I shall end my life; I shall
serve under the banner Of temporal goods; caring nothing
for the rest, I shall look after the body; with various
hues I shall greatly adorn it,“ she goes to the merchant.
She sings Of her desire tO buy, for "much money,"

perfume for her body, and when the merchant sells her the
very best perfume, the Magdalen sings, in German, her
request for rouge for her cheeks. She sings: "ShOpkeeper,
give me color which may redden my cheeks, so that I compel
the young men to think Of wooing me."

Chramer, gip die varwe mier,

diu min wengel roete,

da mit ich di iungen man

an ir danch der minnenliebe noete.

(11. 58-61)

She turns to the young men and sings: "Look on me, young
men; allow me tO delight you."

Seht mich an

iungen man.

Lat mich eu gevallen.
(11. 62-64)

Then addressing her audience with a carpe diem song,

 

she urges the "good men" and "lovely ladies" to make love,

for, she says, wooing, "minne," will ennoble them, let them

be held in high esteem.

151

Minnet, tugentliche man,
minnekliche vrawen.
Minne tuot ev hoech gemut
unde lat evch in hochen eren shauven.
(11. 65-68)

Again she tells the young men to look on her and to
allow her tO delight them. She hails the world so rich in
joys, "also vreudenriche," and vows to Obey the world
always (11. 71-74).

She goes to sleep, and an Angel addresses her by name
and tells her of "Jesus the Nazarene," who forgives sins
and who is now at Simon's house. The4Magdalen arises and
again sings her hymn to the world's joys, "Mundi delectatio."

As "Amator," her lover, approaches, she greets him.
Then, like a Venus teaching young women the courtesan's art,
the Magdalen sings to the young girls the wonders Of the
cosmetic merchant's wares. "They make us beautiful and
pleasing," she says (11. 85-88). The Magdalen and the girls
purchase cosmetics from the merchant while he sings the
praises Of his goods (11. 90-95).

Again the Magdalen sleeps while the Angel repeats his
message to her, but she once more arises singing "Mundi
delectatio." With the Angel's third message, the Magdalen
at last laments her past life, full Of evil, "Heu! vita
preterita vita plena malis" (11. 98-101), and the Angel

rejoices in her repentance. The Magdalen condemns her

152

worldly ornaments, her dazzling clothes, her evil lovers,
and she takes Off her gaudy clothes and puts on a black
cloak (11. 104-107). "Amator" and, surprisingly, "Diabolus"
leave. Evil, like winter, is expelled.

The Magdalen goes to the merchant, this time tO buy
"precious Ointment" to anoint Jesus. She goes, weeping and
lamenting her sins, to Simon's house. And the anointing
scene, much like that of the Digby play, follows. But after
Jesus forgives her of her sins and sends her away in peace,
the Magdalen Of the Benediktbeuren play again Sings a
lamentation Of her sins, with a refrain, "Oi wei, Oi wei,
that I was ever born!"

vae, auve, daz ich ie wart geborn!
(1. 144)

The penitential lament seems, as Karl Young says (I,
555), to be misplaced in the text. .It is an expression of
despair, Of the "whanhope“ which the Magdalen Of the Digby
play thanks Jesus for removing from her. If the lamentation
belongs, as I think it does, in the scene showing the
Magdalen on her visit to the merchant to buy Ointment, the
contrasting visits to the "Mercator" are sharpened. The
Magdalen essentially exchanges her cosmetics box for her
Ointment jar, as She, in the Digby play, exchanges her balms
precious Of price in her worldly arbor for the precious

balms to anoint the Christ in Simon's house.

In both the Benediktbeuren and the Digby plays the

Magdalen participates in the archetypal "rite Of passage,"

155

for through the “sleep of initiation" the Magdalen is
"reborn." And, as Jane Harrison has pointed out in Themis,
the "sleep Of initiation" leads to a new birth.50

Because the Benediktbeuren playwright saw in the com—
plex mythical Magdalen the possibility for a dramatic
change, for a "rebirth," he pictured the Magdalen as a
figure at once contemporary with her audience and timeless.
-She is, in her worldly role, simultaneously a thirteenth-
century woman and a representation Of the archetypal seduc-
tive feminine. The Magdalen, even as a comic figure in her
"Weltleben", is, then, in the Benediktbeuren play a vessel
for the ambivalent view Of woman, as she had been in the
apocryphal writings centuries before.

Although the Magdalen's role takes up, as Karl Young
Observes (I, 554), virtually one-third Of the Benediktbeuren
Passion play, her part in the remainder Of the play is
negligible. She is not, as was the Magdalen Of the Tours
play, given an extended lament for the Christ. Instead,

Mary the mother Of Jesus is given by the Benediktbeuren play-
wright extensive laments for Christ in the crucifixion scene,
which concludes the play. .In both the twelfth-century and
the thirteenth—century plays, however, the literary figure

Of the Magdalen is expanded far beyond the figure Of the

Qpem qpaeritis plays.

 

60Jane Ellen Harrison, Epilegomena to the Study Of
Greek Religion and Themisy_a study Of the social origins Of
Greek religion (Reproduced from the revised Cambridge,
England, edition Of 1927; New York, 1962), p. 55.

154

The Magdalen Of both the twelfth-century Tours play
and the thirteenth-century Benediktbeuren play are closer
kin to the Digby heroine than to each other, for the
fifteenth-century Digby heroine retains both the archetypal
role Of the seductive woman and her place as the woman clos-
est tO the Christ. But beyond either of the earlier
Magdalens, the Digby heroine reflects the generative force
Of the archetypal feminine.

That the Benediktbeuren playwright shares with both
the Digby playwright and the Tours playwright the quality Of
homo ludeng is Obvious in his treatment Of the Magdalen in
her "Weltleben." He works on the borderline between jest
and earnest as he pictures the Magdalen, like Venus herself,
as a woman at once to be desired and feared.

The thirteenth-century playwright, in making the
Magdalen at once a genuinely medieval and a timeless figure,
sets an example for later Easter plays. Particularly in
later German plays, the worldly life Of the Magdalen is
expanded. And the Magdalen's worldly life is treated, with
a difference, by Jean Michel in his Mystere de la Passion,

a play contemporary with the Digby Marpragdalene.

The Magdalen Of Jean Michel's fifteenth-century Mystere
de la Passion is again the seductive woman, but more like
the twentieth-century Nikos Kazantzakis' Magdalen in The_
nggt Temptation of Christ than like any other medieval figure

Of the Magdalen, she fixes her eye on Jesus himself.

155

Jean Michel, Gustave Cohen points out, expanded and changed
the Passion play Of his predecessor Arnoul Greban.61
Michel's most impressive addition to Greban's play is the
dramatization Of the Magdalen's "mondanité."

Jean Michel, boldly homo ludens, juxtaposes the
Magdalen's worldly life with Jesus' transfiguration.52
And the playwright foreshadows the Magdalen's worldly life
with the mondanité and repentance Of Lazarus. While Lazarus
is addicted to hunting, the Magdalen is, as she was in the
Benediktbeuren play, devoted to adorning herself to attract
lovers. Jean Michel spices the mondanité Of the Magdalen
by placing her in the company Of her two saucy chambermaids,
Perusine and Pasiphee.

The Magdalen first appears, dressed in a "habit pomeux,"
an elegant frock, with her maids, and she suggests that they
sing some "new songs" and live the "joyous life."

Disons quelques chanchons nouvelles
Et vivons de joyuese vie.
(p. 177)
The three of them sing a “pOpular song Of their own choice"
(p. 177). As they chatter about woman's privilege of making

joyous noise to attract lovers, the Magdalen declares that

 

61Gustave Cohen, Le Theatre en France au Moyen—Age
(Paris, 1928), I, 64.

62Page references are to the text Of Jean Michel's play
included in Le Livre de Conduite du Regisseur et le Compte
des Dépenses pour le MygtEre de la Passion, Joueié Mons en
1501, ed. Gustave Cohen TParis, 1925), pp. 7-454.

156

she is spirited, daring, SO "Jamais ne me tiengs a ung!"
Never, she says, confine me tO one (p. 178). And while
Pasiphee comments that not being confined to one lover is
the common custom, else one would not take account Of it,
"Et auSSi c'est le train commun/ Autrement on n'en tentroit
compte" (p. 178), Jesus appears, transfigured, on the stage.

After Jesus' transfiguration and his return to "human
form," the Magdalen calls for her perfume, her jewels, her
mirror, to make herself gorgeous for the men. She performs
her toilette on stage, asks for approval Of her looks from
her maids and is assured that she is altogether "5 la mode"
(pp. 181-185).

After scenes showing Jesus performing miracles, the
scene moves to Martha and Lazarus as they discuss their
concern for their sister. Lazarus says that the Magdalen
has acquired a very bad reputation, "Elle acquiert tres
mauvaix renon“ (p. 207), and Martha goes to try to persuade
her sister to save her reputation by changing her way Of
life.

The Magdalen orders Perusine tO bring her most precious
jewels to her as Martha comes to reproach her sister, I’Only
for the love Of you, my sister," she says (p. 208). "Only
for the love Of you, my sister," the Magdalen mocks, and,
after a rapid-fire exchange Of words between the well-
intentioned Martha and her spirited sister, the Magdalen

orders Martha to gO away (p. 209).

157

The next scene shows the Magdalen speaking with Tubal,
Gedeon, and Abacut, whom she stOps as they walk in front
Of her castle. From her window, she asks them why such a
crowd is gathering, and Tubal tells her that the peOple
are coming to hear the "fruitful" sermons Of Jesus the very
holy prophet (p. 212). The Magdalen asks what his sermons
deal with: "Does he speak at all of joyous things in his
sermons?" And Tubal tells her that Jesus' "sweet eloquence”
makes all that the PrOphet says joyous (p. 212).

The Magdalen then inquires about Jesus' physical
appearance. "And is he Of a very beautiful appearance to
see?" Abacut answers that he is tall and straight, wise,
steadfast, sedate, and grave, but this is not enough to
satisfy the Magdalen's curiosity. She wants a full descrip-
tion Of Jesus. She asks: Is he well formed? What is the
Shape Of his face? How Old is he? What kind Of beard and
hair does he have? What color? What is his complexion?
What are his eyes like? His hands? "Les autre§_ghose§?"
His clothes? (pp. 215-214).

She learns from the men that Jesus is the most handsome
man in the world, is thirty-two years Old, has long hair
and a beard slightly curly and a little golden, is Of a rosy-
brown complexion, has eyes "clear as the beautiful moon"
and beautiful well-shaped hands, that he is altogether pleas-
ing to look upon. Asking Pasiphee and Perusine if she is
pleasing and pretty enough and being reassured by the maids

that she is quite pleasing, that her body is well-corseted,

 

158

"deriere et devant," the Magdalen goes to the temple tO

cast her eyes on the "most handsome man in the world."

She stays at a distance from the crowd, certainly hoping
that she will attract the attention Of the good-looking
preacher and that he will find her pleasing. But at the end
Of the sermon, the "seductive" Magdalen is, as Gustave Cohen
aptly puts it, herself "seduced" by the words Of the hand-
some Prophet.63

The Magdalen weeps, laments her sins, and her maids
praise Jesus (p. 215). Still dressed in her finery but
wearing a "simple kerchief" on her head, the Magdalen goes
to Simon's house (p. 216). She washes Jesus' feet, dries
them with her hair, and anoints his head with "l'eau de
Damas" (p. 217). Simon mutters about "la belle Magdaleine"
so full Of Sin, and Jesus tells him the parable Of the two
debtors and forgives the Magdalen her past sins (p. 218).
The Magdalen leaves, saying "J'en quicte la mondanite" as
she removes her worldly clothes and goes in a simple garment
to tell Martha Of her conversion (p. 218).

Jean Michel does not emphasize the converted Magdalen's
closeness to the Christ, but in the dramatization Of the
resurrection Of Lazarus, he implies a closeness between
Jesus and the Magdalen by having the Christ call specifically

for the Magdalen when he goes to raise Lazarus from the grave.

 

67Cohen, Le Theatre en France, I, 68.

 

159

The Magdalen is also pictured walking alone near the
“parcq” as she thinks Of again anointing Jesus, this time
at Simon "the Leper's“ house (p. 258). After She anoints
Jesus, John says that the house is full of the sweet smell
of balms (p. 260), but Judas complains of the waste Of
money. Jesus defends the Magdalen and praises her for her
love of him (p. 261).

Although the Magdalen is not given by Jean Michel
extended laments for the Christ, She is, as in the Gospel
of John's account of the resurrection of Christ, the first
to whom the risen Christ appears, and she is sent by the
Christ, whom she at first mistakes for the gardener, as an
"apostle to the apostles" (p. 419).

It is the picture of the worldly Magdalen that links
Jean Michel with the thirteenth-century Benediktbeuren play-
wright as well as with the Digby playwright, for the
Magdalen is, in her mondanité, simultaneously a contemporary
and an omnitemporal figure. Although she sings pOpular
songs of her day and dresses in the fashion Of the elegant
ladies Of her time, she retains an attribute Of the archetypal
feminine, the fascinating but dangerous seducer Of men. Jean
Michel's boldest innovation is, Of course, his having the
Magdalen try to seduce Jesus himself.

His audience must have delighted in the incongruity Of
the beautiful prostitute boldly eyeing the man-God Jesus as

he preached Of life eternal. And the French audience surely

140

experienced a special pleasure when their patron saint Of
perfume-manufacturers anointed the Christ's head with the
fragrant l'eau de Damas. And viewing the Magdalen's
repentance brought about by the very words Of Jesus rather
than by warnings from an angel, the audience must have been
moved by the sudden weeping Of the "belle Magdaleine,"
patron saint Of reformed prostitutes, as she stood apart
from the crowd.

The complex Magdalen's potentiality for rebirth is,
then, differently treated by Jean Michel than by either the
Benediktbeuren or the Digby playwright. The Magdalen in
Michel's play does not pass through the "sleep Of initiation"
during whichaniangel warns her to change her way Of life.
Instead, Jean Michel's Magdalen, having rejected Martha's
efforts to save her reputation is awake to the words Of
Jesus. She experiences internally and consciously the regret
for her past life and the desire to forsake her mondanité,
and though affected by the words Of Jesus, the Magdalen makes
her own choice for her "rebirth." NO angel helps her, nor
does any demon hinder her. Doctor Michel adds an extra
dimension to the complex literary figure Of the Magdalen;
he gives her freedom Of choice.

The worldly life of the Magdalen pictured in the drama
inevitably appealed to the imaginations Of artists. One
fifteenth-century artist included in his illustrations for

Eustache Marcade's Mystere de la Papgigp a representation

141

Of the Magdalen, elegantly gowned and wearing a diadem atop
her head with her long hair flowing on her shoulders.64
Her gallant lover converses animatedly with her as the two
Of them move dancingly toward the bed in her chamber. The
lover, akin tO a MephistOpheles, has one arm around the
Magdalen as he looks down at her and Sweepingly gestures
toward the bed, while the Magdalen, with her eyes downcast,
touches her heart. A kitten sleeps curled on a rug in the
foreground. The mood Of the illustration is, like that of
the worldly scenes in the drama, playfully comic, a bedroom
joke in picture.

By dramatizing the Magdalen's worldly life and by iso-
lating the Magdalen as the Mary closest to the Christ,
playwrights had, then, expanded the literary figure and not
only provided artists with an intriguing subject but also
paved the way for the Digby heroine. Playwrights had, from
the twelfth century on, recognized and represented something
of the archetypal feminine present in the mythical Magdalen.
Medieval playwrights had, as had the early writers Of
apocryphal works, used the Magdalen as a vessel for ideas
that reflect an ambivalent view of woman.

The Digby playwright is, however, the first dramatist
to use the life Of the Magdalen as it had been set down by

Jacobus a VOragine in the Legenda Aurea in the thirteenth

 

64Illustrationfireproduced in Gustave Cohen's Le Theatre
en France au Moyen-Agp, I, plate XXVIII.

142

century. Other playwrights who dramatized the Passion and
Resurrection Of the Christ were not concerned with picturing
the Magdalen's life after Christ's ascension. Because the
Digby playwright is directly concerned with representing

the Magdalen's long life, he draws material from the pOpular

and Often translated Legenda Aurea. The Golden Legend,

 

first translated into English in 1450, was published by
William Caxton in 1485. The Goldepgpegendflg life of Saint
Mary Magdalene not only provides the Digby playwright with
material not used by other playwrights but also further
demonstrates the continuity Of early Magdalen traditions.65

The Magdalen Of The Golden Legend, like the Magdalen
Of the second-century gistis Sophia, is “enlumined Of perfect
knowledge in thought" (Legend, p. 75), and like the Mariham
Of the Gospel Of Magy, she is the woman whom Jesus "embraced"
all in his love and "made right familiar with him" (Legend,
p. 75). Like the Magdalen Of the Pistis Sophia, "who is
beautiful in her speaking,“ Mary Magdalene is "fair speaking,"
for, the Legend tells us, with her lips she had kissed the
feet Of "our Lord" (p. 76).

Like an ancient goddess, the Magdalen Of the Legend

brings about not only the queen's conception Of a child but

also, according to Jacobus, the conception of a son for the

 

65References in this discussion are to The Golden
Legend or Lives Of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton,
ed. F. 5. Ellis (London, 1900), IV, 72-89.

145

Duke of Burgundy, who had requested that the Magdalen's

body be moved from Aix to Vézelay in A.D. 771 (p. 86). Like
an Isis, she saves a woman with child from shipwreck, and
like Christ himself, she restores the dead to life, for She
resurrects not only the queen Of Marseilles but also, the
Legend reports, a knight who had been slain in battle (p.
87). The Magdalen of the Books Of the Savior must have
learned well the "mysteries“ taught by Jesus to his "beloved"
and to his brothers.

Although the Digby playwright draws from the Legend's
life of the Magdalen, he does not slavishly follow it. He
selects events and transforms them. He shows, for example,
the Magdalen sent alone tO Marseilles, while Jacobus tells
Of Maximian, Lazarus, Martha, Marcelle, and Saint Cedony being
put to sea in a ship without a rudder and sailing, by God's
grace, tO Marseilles (p. 76). And although Jacobus includes
the legend explaining the Magdalen's life Of prostitution
by saying that she was wed to John the Evangelist when Jesus
called John to him, the Digby playwright does not choose to
use it. The Digby heroine does, however, demonstrate Jacobus'
statement that because "our Lord had taken (away) from her
sovereign delight Of the flesh, he replenished her with
sovereign delight spiritual tofore all other, that is the
love Of God" (pp. 87—88).

The Digby playwright also chooses to allude tO Jacobus'

etymological exPlication Of the Magdalen's name when he has

144

Jesus speak Of the Magdalen's "bitter weeping" in her
penitance. For "Mary“ means “bitter," Jacobus says (p. 75).
It also means, he says, “light," and in her contemplation,
the Magdalen's face "shone like the rays Of the sun" (p.
85), and she "spreads light abundantly" (p. 75). The Digby
playwright has Lechery compare the Magdalen's "bemy Of bewte"
to the sun's rays, and he shows the Magdalen as a blinding
light when she enters the queen's and king's chamber. She
is called the Light, Jacobus says (p. 75), and she, like the
Christ whom she hymns as the Light, becomes in the Digby
play the light that "Spreads abundantly."

Jacobus also includes the legend that we have seen in
An Old English Martyrology and attributes it to Josephus.
After Christ's ascension, the legend goes, the Magdalen had
such a burning love for the Christ that she could not bear
tO lOOk on any man and so went into the desert, at Aix,
Jacobus says, to live alone for thirty years, and she was
daily fed by angels (p. 85). The Digby playwright, we
remember, has the Magdalen decide, after her mission to
Marseilles is completed, to go to the desert to be
"contemplatyff" and gain "spiritual strength." And in his
picture Of the Magdalen's hermit life he emphasizes both her
love for the Christ and Christ's love for her. .The Digby
heroine, unlike the legendary saint, however, kisses the
earth fervently as she dies.

The Magdalen Of the Digby play retains more Of the

attributes given her during the early centuries Of

145

Christianity than does any other medieval literary figure Of
the Magdalen. The Digby Magdalen, like the Pistis Sophia,
has, as Jesus tells the Magdalen after her repentance, "an
inward might that has purchased light from darkness." The
Digby heroine, like the Pistis Sophia, forsakes the "mysteries
Of the intercourse" for the “mystery" Of union with the
divine. She is like the soul whose "journey through the

Powers" the Magdalen describes in the GOSpel Of Mapy, for She,

 

like the soul, is saved from "a world in a world," because
Jesus has rid her Of the "Power's seven evils“ SO that in
her the "kingdom of the flesh," "desire," and "ignorance"
have come tO an end. She is, as Jesus, in the gletis Sophia,
had told her she would be, "pure spirit," the "Pleroma Of
the Pleromas."

The Digby heroine, placed in a Western medieval setting,
is, as she was in Eastern writings of the early Christian
period, the Christian Athene, the goddess Of wisdom, and
she is also the goddess of the earth and Of fertility, the
Bride of the Song Of Songs, Christ's "soror mea sponsa," an
Isis as well as a seductive Aphrodite.

Just as the Digby playwright reveals the archetypal
feminine present in the mythical Magdalen so do inconOg-
raphic representations Of the Magdalen reveal the figure's
kinship with antique goddesses. A work which, I think,
closely approximates the Digby playwright's picture of the

complex Magdalen is a marble sculpture begun by Desidero da

146

Sattignano and completed after his death by his followers.66

The sculpture stands in Santa Trinité in Florence, and
like the Magdalen carved by Desidero's teacher, the fifteenth-
century Donatello, the work represents the Magdalen as a
hermit clothed in her long hair. Unlike Donatello's suffer-
ing shrunken penitent, however, the Santa Trinita Magdalen
radiates a joyous beauty. .Although her face is lined with
age, her eyes Sparkle as if they held a secret wisdom. ~With
her lips slightly parted, she smiles. She holds in one hand
her ointment jar. Her bare legs and arms are those Of a
graceful Venus, and a broad shining ribbon belts her long
hair against her waist. The Santa Trinité Magdalen is at
once as Old as the Earth and as young as a new Spring.

The sculpture reveals, within the Christian hermit, the
attributes Of a goddess Of wisdom and Of love, the Great
Mother who accepts her kinship with the earth. And the
Magdalen Of the marble sculpture is indeed an incarnation Of
the Great Earth Mother who is the "Mother Of Stones."67

In the Magdalen Of the sculpture are united the woman
"ful fayr and ful Of femynyte," the "beryl Of bewte" who

delights in her worldly "valentynes," the penitent who

 

66Photographs of the sculpture are on Plates 55 to 46
in The Magdalen and Sculptures in Relief, photographs by
Clarence Kennedy. Studies in the History and Criticism Of
Sculpture (Northampton, Mass., 1929)j Vol. VI

67Erich Neumann in The Great Mother (p. 260) points out
that the Earth Mother is, among other things, the mother Of
stones.

147

anoints the Christ with "precious bawmys" and wipes his feet
with her hair "fayr and bright Shynyng," the "sweet cypresse"
who restores the queen Of Marseilles to life on the "rock Of
ston," the "holy apostylesse“ who preaches Christ's "Sermon
on the Mount" to the peOple of Marseilles, the "repast
contemplatyff" who lives thirty years as a hermit speaking
only with the Christ and his angels, the earth goddess who
kisses her earth fervently as she dies. The Santa Trinité
marble sculpture is a plastic realization Of the Digby
playwright's complex heroine, the mythical Magdalen whose
various attributes are united through the humanistic view
Of woman as a generative force.

"Beneath new attitudes, or mental sets," E. H. Gombrich

aptly Observes in Art and Illusion (p. 114), "the Old ones

 

survive and come tO the surface in play and earnest."

CONCLUSION

THE MAGDALEN: A VESSEL FOR THE PARADOXICAL
ARCHETYPAL FEMININE IN WESTERN LITERATURE

In this eXploration of the shaping of myths around the
Mary Magdalene sketched in the New Testament canonical
gospels and of the effects of the myths on the literary
figure Of the Magdalen, I have emphasized the play element
as it is manifested in the medieval dramatists' treatments
Of the literary figure. I am not, Of course, the first to
recognize the play element in medieval drama. V. A. Kolve,
for example, in The Plgy Called Corpus Christi (Stanford,
Calif., 1966), describes the purpose Of the Corpus Christi
play (p. 52): "A lie designed to tell the truth about
reality, the drama was understood as significant play."
Kolve also points out the "game and glee" present in the
Digby Maperagdalene. And Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens
emphasizes the play element that permeated the Middle Ages.
"Medieval life,“ Huizinga says (p. 179), "was brimful Of
play . " T

I have also suggested that the play element contributed
to the shaping of myths around the Mary Magdalene Of the

New Testament, for I agree with Huizinga when he says

148

149

(Homo Ludens, p. 25): “In play as we conceive it the dis-
tinction between belief and make-believe breaks down. The
conception Of play merges quite naturally with that Of
holiness." That the Magdalen was chosen to figure both as
the "companion“ of the Christ and as a vessel for the
ambivalent view of woman reveals, I repeat, imaginations
working on the borderline between jest and earnest in the
attempt to preserve ideas too deep-rooted to be destroyed.

I also see in the ideas and figures in the apocryphal
writings support for the hypotheses implicit in the Magdalen
questions raised by the examination Of the Digby heroine.
That nothing grows from nothing and that man's imagination
works through eclectic syncretism Of the Old in the creation
Of the new we can see in the results Of the attempt to create
a Christian literature during the early centuries Of the
Christian era.

In the attempt to create a new literature around the
figure Of the Christ, the writers Of the apocrypha drew
from the literary and legendary material about them. Not
through any deliberate study and research but through the
eclecticism inherent in the human imagination as it seeks
to fulfill a desire for continuity, the writers Of the
apocrypha surrounded the Christ with figures bearing attri-
butes Of Old Eastern deities and with ideas borrowed from
antique religions and from Plato. And closest to the Christ,
the early writers placed the Magdalen, a heroine who at once

embodied dualistic ideas and attributes Of antique goddesses.

150

We can, I think, safely conclude that had no myth been
Shaped around the Mary Magdalene of the New Testament
canonical gospels, there would never have been a Digby play

Mary Magdalene. The Digby playwright's heroine is, except

 

for her role with the other Marys who gO to the tomb seeking
Christ and except for her role as the first to whom the risen
Christ appears, altogether mythical.

Through myths attached to the Magdalen during the early
centuries of Christianity, the Digby heroine is a member Of
a family, a prostitute, the anointer Of the Christ, the
spiritual lover of the Christ, a "preacher," a "contemplative,"
a goddess Of both wisdom and love, Christ's feminine counter-
part. Through elaboration and localization Of early myths
during the complex twelfth century, the Digby heroine goes
tO Marseilles as "an holy apostylesse," converts the queen
and king Of Marseilles by bringing about the queen's con-
ception Of a child, preaches Christ's "Sermon on the Mount"
to the people Of Marseilles, goes as a hermit to a nearby
wilderness, no doubt La Sainte-Baume, tO gain spiritual
strength by forsaking material food, and kisses the earth as
She dies while her soul is taken to heaven amidst "mery song."

I doubt that the Digby playwright's figure Of the
Magdalen would have come into being had the prototype for the
literary figure not been created in the East during the early
centuries Of Christianity and had not the Eastern traditions

been carried to the West in the Middle Ages. We may idly ask

151

whether or not the Magdalen would have become a literary
figure at all had the Alogi, who argued for the exclusion

Of John's gospel from the canon, triumphed. .Certainly the
good French wives would never have had a Saint Rabony to
improve their "bad" husbands. And Magdalen iconography would
have been the poorer, for the "Noli me tangere" scene has
appealed to artists through the centuries.

I have assumed that John's recognition scene, with its
suggestion of the archetypal earth goddess searching for the
heaven god, is the probable inspiration for the early attempts
to isolate the Magdalen as a feminine counterpart for the
Christ. For the time being, I hold as a valid hypothesis
the assumption that John's picture Of the Magdalen's close-
ness to the Christ is Of primary importance in bringing about
the shaping Of myths around the Magdalen rather than around
any other New Testament figure.

But would Mark's simple statement that the risen Christ
first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom seven devils had
been ejected, have sufficiently sparked imaginations to bring
about the creation of the complex literary figure? Would the
Magdalen have been identified as Christ's "companion" in
early apocryphal writings? ‘WOuld she have been the "pure
spiritual Mariham, Mariham the happy," the Christian Athene
Of the Pistis Sophia? ‘Would she have been a source of
resentment for Peter?

I do not know what might have been, but I feel sure

that imaginations would have sought tO create a feminine

152

counterpart for the anthrOpomorphic Christ. And whoever

that feminine figure may have been, to become a timeless
literary figure, she would have had to embody the archetypal
feminine: the dangerous but fascinating seducer Of man,

yet life's generative force, the goddess Of wisdom and Of
love. For the archetypal feminine is, it seems tO me, the
necessary complement for the archetypal masculine hero, even
if the hero is, as he sometimes is, envisioned as androgynous.

At any rate, myths did grow up around the Magdalen SO
that the literary figure came into being, and we can, I think,
summarize both the methods Of Shaping the myths and the feel-
ings that prompted the creation of the mythical Magdalen
with an account Of Jean Cousin's representation Of the
Magdalen. .Dora and Erwin Panofsky, in Pandora's Box, the
ghanqing Aspects Of a Mythical:§ymbol_(New York, 1965), give
an accountcfoean Cousin's transformation of his painting
Eva Prima Pandora into a relief of the Magdalen. At the re-
quest Of Guillaume Sotan, canon Of Sens Cathedral, according
to the Panofskys (p. 62, n..15), Jean Cousin, in 1567,
repeated, with slight changes, his painting Eva Prima Pandora
to produce the representation Of the Magdalen.

The painting, the Panofskys report (p. 62), shows a
"beautiful nude reclining in front of shrubs, trees, and
ruined masonry, which, forming a kind Of arch, disclose the
prospect Of a river and an ancient city; and a tablet sus-
pended across the arch bears the inscription: Eva_grima

Pandora." On looking at the reproduction (Panofsky, ill. 29),

155

we see the woman's face in profile, her lips slightly parted,
her eyes gazing beyond the picture's frame, her hair coiffed
but leaving two strands free to caress her neck. One hand
lifts nonchalantly the lid Of the box, the other holds a
leafy branch and rests on a skull. At the request Of the
canon, the nude Eva-Pandora is transformed into a decorously
dressed Magdalen.

Eva, Pandora, the Magdalen--an Old Testament figure, a
Greek mythological figure, a New Testament figure--are super-
imposed one On another, united in time. Eve-Pandora's box

of evils becomes the Magdalen's jar of hOpe. Felix culpa

 

incarnate. The archetypal feminine, with all its inherent
paradox, is embodied in an Eve-Pandora-Magdalen.

The mythical Magdalen was created for a Similar reason
and in much the same way as the Eva Prima Pandora was trans-
formed intO the Magdalen. Not through historical perspective
but through eclectic syncretism, characteristic Of all human
imagination which tries to satisfy the desire for continuity
by absorbing the Old into the new, the complex Magdalen came
into being.

We have Seen the mythical Magdalen taking shape during
the early centuries Of Christianity by viewing the Mary
Magdalene of the New Testament canonical gospels and the
other New Testament figures with whom she was early identi-
fied. -We have seen the Magdalen become Christ's companion,
the goddess Of wisdom, in the Gospel of Mary and in the

Pistis Sophia, and we have seen her, as the Christ's anointer,

154

in Origen's mystical interpretation Of the Song Of Songs,
identified with the great earth goddess, the heaven-god's
sister-bride.

By examining the creation Of the prototype for the
medieval figure of the Magdalen, I hope to have provided a
basis for a deeper understanding Of the complex Magdalen who
reaches such prominence during the Middle Ages and who be-
comes the heroine Of the fifteenth-century Digby play
Marynggdalene. For although the Magdalen Of the Digby play
has been categorized as a Christian penitent, or as a sinner,
a disciple, a saint, She embodies, beyond these character-
istics, as the sculptor Desidero da Sattignano well demon-
strates, the archetypal feminine. .And it is, I think, the
early attribution to the Magdalen Of elements Of the complex
archetypal feminine that makes the Magdalen a timeless
figure, a figure who continues to live in twentieth-century
literature.

Just as the writers Of the early Christian period be-
queathed tO the Middle Ages the prototype for the literary
figure, so the Middle Ages bequeathed to the twentieth
century the literary figure of the Magdalen.

The preceding study has fulfilled its major purposes if
it has heightened awareness both Of the nature Of the myths
Shaped around the Mary Magdalene Of the New Testament canoni-
cal gospels and Of the effects of the myths on the literary

figure, particularly on the heroine Of the Digby Mary Mggdalene.

155

And I would like to believe that this brief study has en-
riched appreciation for the Magdalen who has in various ways
figured in mankind's imagination for some two thousand years,
for the Magdalen whose name is drOpped by such differing
writers as James Joyce, John Barth, Gfinter Grass, and Saul
Bellow, all homo ludeng, to connote the paradoxical archetypal
feminine embodied in the mythical Magdalen.

Nikos Kazantzakis in his last work Report tO GrecO
(New York, 1965, p. 228) exclaims: “O, I said tO myself, if
only man's heart were omnipotent, powerful enough to wrestle
with death! If only it were like Mary Magdalene--Mary
Magdalene the prostitute--and could resurrect the beloved
corpse!"

Certainly a figure so long-lived, so vital as the

Magdalen deserves, indeed demands, further study.

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