The intriguing but fictional world that unfolds in Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" has brought renewed interest in Jesus' most prominent female disciple, Mary Magdalene. Yet the identification of the real Mary Magdalene may be puzzle enough! Various windows and furnishings in Grace Cathedral display her various misidentities and legends, and give insight into her life.

Mary came from Magdala, a small town on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee. The place name means 'tower', perhaps a structure for drying and salting fish, a local industry. She was a wealthy noble-born landowner, according to post-scripture tradition. Jesus cured Mary of "seven demons" and she accompanied him on his mission (Luke 8:2), was present at his crucifixion and burial (Mat 27.56 et al.), visited the empty tomb (Mat 28.1 et al.), and may have been the first to see the risen Christ (John 20.14-16). The "demons" of which she was cured are often interpreted today as some form of severe mental illness. Formerly, they were seen as sexual sins, misogynistically confusing Mary Magdalene with an unnamed "scarlet woman", an assumed repentant prostitute, who perfumed Jesus' feet and dried them with her hair in a pharisee's house (Luke 7.37-38). John identifies this unnamed woman with Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, who repeats the same act in their house (John 12.3). However, John does not mention the "surname" Magdalene. The Greek fathers considered the three Marys to be three different people. In a homily of ca. 561, Pope Gregory the Great identified them all as one person, Mary Magdalene, a view unchanged in Roman Catholic tradition until1969. Later biblical scholars have refuted this unfortunate conflation, preferring to see two or three different women.

Leonardo DaVinci's supposed depiction of Mary Magdalene seated next to Jesus in his famous Last Supper painting (1490s), unsupported by scripture, is a confusion of her image with the traditional depiction of John, "the disciple who Jesus loved", as a beardless young man. That traditional image of John goes back in Christian art to the 6th century or earlier. A young beardless John is depicted in several Grace Cathedral windows, notably the fourth lancet of the New Testament window in the south transept (Connick, 1931). One medieval story holds that the bridal couple at Cana, occasion of Jesus' first miracle (John 2.1-11), were actually John and Mary Magdalene! Greek tradition has her spending her last years with him and the Virgin Mary in Ephesus, with final interment in St. Lazarus Church, Constantinople.

In the central scene of the Flemish altarpiece in the Chapel of Grace (Antwerp?, 1520), Mary Magdalene clings, unconsolable, to the base of the cross (a medieval pose based on John 19.25). In the cathedral's south aisle Love window (left lancet, Connick, 1934), she holds the jar of fragrant spice oil with which she intended to deodorize and preserve the dead body of the entombed, but in fact risen, Jesus (Mark 16.1). In the window border are skulls representing Calvary. The medallions below show Pope Gregory's three-in-one Marys; Mary the repentant prostitute anointing Jesus' feet, Mary sister of Martha listening to the words of Christ- symbolic of the contemplative life, and Mary Magdalene in the garden encountering the risen Christ (Mark 16.9). Mary Magdalene ran to tell his male disciples, a reversal of traditional roles that seems to reinforce the reality of the resurrection. In the Risen Christ tapestry (Brussels, 1525), hung in the south choir aisle, we see her (background) at the empty tomb with the other women and the angel (Mark 16.1-6), and again (right foreground) in the garden with the spade-holding "gardener", the risen Christ (John 20.14-16). Here Mary, dressed in the latest Flemish fashion of the 1520s, has just recognized Christ. The scene is the famous "noli me tangere" ("do not cling to me") in which Jesus asks her to stop embracing him (that is, his feet -- see Mat 28.9), revealing their new spiritual relationship, as he has not yet ascended to the Father (John 20.17).

The Mary Magdalene icon by Robert Lentz (1990) in the Chapel of Grace baptistry shows a dark-skinned intensely-gazing Magdalene, based on the famous National Geographic photo of Afghan refugee Sharbat Gula. Mary's name is inscribed below in Syriac, and she holds an egg. An Eastern Orthodox legend recounts that she visited Rome and was invited to an audience with the Emperor Tiberius. Her gift to the emperor was an egg, symbolic of Christ's resurrection, which she taught to him. The emperor scoffed and exclaimed he would not believe unless the egg changed color. The egg turned bright red in her hands. The miracle was the origin of the colored Easter egg tradition. Highlighting Mary's gender and stature as a disciple, and the rise of women and people of color in the church, the icon was dedicated by Bishop Barbara Harris, first woman bishop, and first African-American woman bishop, of the Episcopal Church, in 1990.

In the Archangels window (left lancet, St. Martha, Connick, 1932), the Provençal legend of Mary Magdalene is featured in the first medallion. It identifies Mary Magdalene with Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus. The legend was probably developed in the 9th century through an over-imaginative confusion of an early Bishop Lazarus of Marseilles with the Lazarus raised from death by Christ. In the legend, set adrift from Palestine in an oarless and sailless boats by hostile unbelievers, Mary, her sister Martha and brother Lazarus, drifted westward until the boat reached Marseilles. Mary sits with Lazarus in the boat as it arrives, the townspeople greeting Martha joyfully. Mary Magdalene converted the town. In the conclusion of her French legend, Mary Magdalene retired to a nearby cliff-face grotto as an anchorite, spending her final thirty years in contemplation of the Savior she followed and revered, sustained by angels. Vezelay monastery, site of her supposed relics from the 10th century, became a major pilgrimage center and cathedral dedicated to her, but when her "original" tomb was rediscovered in 1279 at the Church St. Maximin la Sainte-Baume, Vezelay Cathedral lost its pilgrimage status.

As for the Gnostic "Gospel of Mary" which depicts Mary Magdalene as specially favored with secret knowledge imparted by a vision of the risen Christ, that text dates from late in the second century, nearly a century after the latest possible date for St. John's gospel, and a century and a quarter after St. Mark's gospel. The "Gospel of Philip" suggesting physical intimacy between Mary and Jesus, is of about the same age, yet sexuality was considered corrupt in Gnostic belief. However, for the diehard "DaVinci Code" fan, there are still questions. Grace Cathedral may harbor links to some of these mysteries (see A Grace Cathedral-Da Vinci Code Quiz below). While "The Da Vinci Code" is fiction laced with fact and hearsay, it does encourage the reader toward a wider search in which an informed and inquiring mind can engage and rejuvenate the spirit. "It is the glory of God to conceal things", wrote the wise Solomon in Proverbs (25.2), " but the glory of kings is to search things out."

A GRACE CATHEDRAL-DA VINCI CODE QUIZ

1. What Florentine artists with works in Grace Cathedral were contemporaries of Da Vinci?
2. Why are four pentacles depicted on the vaulting bosses above the High Altar?
3. What castle named in the novel has murals by cathedral muralist John DeRosen?
4. Why are flaming roses shown in the border of the Mary Magdalene window?
5. Which cathedral door displays French royal symbols?
6. Which cathedral altar shows arms of a medieval knight of an order?
7. What chivalric order meets at Grace Cathedral?
8. What do Grace Cathedral and the nearby Masonic Temple have in common?

Click here to see answers.

 
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