Mary Magdalene

ON ST. MARY MAGDALENE

AT MARSEILLES.

SECTION I.

HISTORICAL-CRITICAL COMMENTARY.

Mary Magdalene, at Marseilles in the Province of Gaul (St.)

BHL Number: 5492, 5502

BY J. B. S.

§ I. The state of the question is set forth.

That which the Doctor of the Gentiles once wrote concerning genealogies in the first chapter of his epistle to Timothy, verse 4—that they are endless questions—some think may not ineptly be applied here, so that the discussion to be here proposed and worked out concerning the most illustrious saint in the whole Catholic world, Mary Magdalene, may be declared endless and interminable: An interminable question has arisen a saint most known from the sacred Gospels themselves for her most fervent love toward Christ the Savior, yet to this day entangled as to her own characteristic marks; inasmuch as she has now for two centuries been disputed about, and still furthermore among the most learned men a keen contention remains; variously once proposed, variously concluded; not yet decided, nor ever likely to be settled with any probability by arguments purely historical. Set before us are the oracles of the Evangelists, which cannot deceive; open to all are the opinions of the venerable Fathers in explaining them; one might almost say that the erudition of the most perspicacious interpreters and other writers has been exhausted in vain, and yet the question has not hitherto been so cleared up that it is quite plain to which of the contending parties the human mind may wholly acquiesce—the mind that is to be fully satisfied only when the truth is discerned, or to be subdued only by divine faith.

[2] concerning a Saint by far the most illustrious, I have touched upon the sources, or the places from which the arguments to be brought forward come, not because there is any question of some dogma in which faith could suffer detriment; for the matter rests on a pure historical fact, neither clearly revealed nor determined from the sense of the Fathers, or, as I was saying, easily settled. But that the weight of the matters may sufficiently appear, and that the whole affair may be circumscribed within its just limits, those things must be lucidly premised and restricted concerning which and in what manner there is controversy. For the innumerable things written about the Magdalenes and the Marys—shall I say they are intricate?—the testimonies of the Fathers adduced this way and that, these same things pulled apart in the most diverse fashions and wrested to the sense of those arguing—if you weigh them rightly, you will perceive that they bring almost no certain or decisive weight to either one or the other of the parties contending today; certainly few that expressly touch upon the present controversy. We, with what zeal we can, shall endeavor in this place to avoid letting a matter in itself sufficiently entangled cast still greater darkness upon the readers, to whom difficulty enough will be supplied even while the whole controversy, contracted within its just limits, is set forth. To the various stages, or phases, of the great litigation we are gradually approaching.

[3] Nor indeed is there here to be inquired, after our manner, concerning her sanctity, virtues, deeds, miracles, or cult, and things so clearly expressed by the Evangelists. nor can it be doubted by anyone, when we name St. Mary Magdalene on this day, that the discourse is about her whom the sacred Evangelists most expressly, in various places, designate by that proper appellation, with this mark added, that the Lord freed her from seven malignant spirits: Luke 8, "Mary who is called Magdalene, out of whom seven demons had gone." Mark 16, "He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons." The same is she who, in John 19, "stood beside the Cross of Jesus," and, John 20, who "announced to the Apostles that she had seen the Lord." The same, finally, who in Matthew 27 and 28 is more than once named. These things are so clear that they almost strike the eyes with their own light, and scarcely, when these have been read, can anyone be persuaded that difficulties could arise concerning this woman so praised in the Gospels.

[4] But the hinge does not turn there; all acknowledge St. Mary Magdalene as most well known; there must be heard the things which the holy Fathers and other writers have investigated concerning her. It was asked by the Fathers whether she herself was the sinful woman. From Luke 7 the beginning of the question is in some way drawn, namely from the most widely known history of the sinful woman bursting into the banquet of Simon the Pharisee and anointing the feet of Christ. For it is asked whether that penitent sinful woman—who is mentioned only in St. Luke's Gospel and is anonymous—whether, I say, that woman is herself our St. Mary Magdalene, first a sinner in the city, then the most beloved follower, disciple, and minister of Christ. And this is the first phase, if it be permitted so to speak, or aspect, under which one might contemplate the question and defend the affirmative part, as long ago did men most holy and equally most learned—St. Bernard, Nicholas of Clairvaux, Peter Abbot of Celle, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure—whose words and arguments, where need shall be, we shall bring forward.

[5] Again, since in John chapter 11 Mary is said to have been the sister of Lazarus and Martha, of whom the Evangelist declares: Others, whether she is the sister of Lazarus and Martha? "Now Mary was she who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair"—but no other anointing is known to have been done before that time except that one and only anointing, of which we have already treated from Luke's Gospel—the Fathers and interpreters dispute whether that Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, called from the place of her dwelling Bethanian, was herself that penitent woman, formerly a sinner in the city, no longer Mary Magdalene, but that most loving Mary who also, "sitting beside the feet of the Lord, heard His word," while her sister Martha, solicitous and occupied with domestic matters, was compelled alone to minister to the Lord; under which terms other men, illustrious both in sanctity and in doctrine, defend that opinion under the lead of Augustine—whose list Calmet did not rightly compile, omitting Augustine, but adducing Bede and others who most openly defend the unity, concerning whom more fully below.

[6] The capital controversy, whether one or several women are designated. These two opinions, however diverse among themselves, a third and most common one seems to have combined into one, which, relying on a logical principle, judges it consequent that things which are the same as one third thing are to be connected among themselves, and thinks that the authorities of those Fathers may be drawn not inconveniently to its own side; and this is, and always was, the consensus of the Church herself, when she believed Mary Magdalene, already confused with the sinful woman, and this woman in turn with the Bethanian Mary, to be one and the same woman: namely, to repeat again, she judged and constantly judges that that penitent sinful woman, and Mary Magdalene, and Mary the sister of Lazarus and Martha, are by no means to be distinguished. This very consensus, I say, and most received, is that of the whole Catholic Church, at least of the Western, established and confirmed by perpetual tradition, by ecclesiastical Offices and other monuments from every age.

[7] Not, as it was once disputed concerning the anointers, Lest any confusion remain, it must be altogether premised and confessed that the question was not once agitated among the more ancient Fathers, both Latin and Greek, in this way—namely concerning one or several Evangelical women (whom afterwards some called three Magdalenes, others three Marys)—for their chief investigation now inclined this way, now that, according as the chapters of the Gospels to be expounded suggested matter. For it was asked chiefly about the anointings, and how manifold they were, or whether they were done by different women. Of the more common opinion of the first centuries Origen is witness, in Matthew homily 35: "Many indeed think," he says, "that the four Evangelists set forth concerning one and the same woman." So also Chrysostom, on the same Evangelist: "She seems to be one and the same among all the Evangelists." But of these things more below, where we treat of Theophilus of Antioch, Theophylact, Euthymius, and other Greeks, as well as of the Latin Fathers who are wrongly adduced in favor of a threefold woman; just as the defenders of the unity are wont to allege certain Fathers who do not seem to have thought about the present question; so that for a right understanding and definition of our whole controversy all those things must be set apart which do not touch the true knot of the question here to be ventilated.

[8] but as a new opinion thrust forward by Faber Stapulensis, This, then, is the very question, and no other: on the one part certain more recent writers, under the leadership of Faber Stapulensis and Jodocus Clichtove, will have it that Mary Magdalene, Mary the Bethanian, and both of these are most diverse from the penitent sinful woman, so that not one but three altogether distinct women must be held; and thus this opinion is plainly opposed diametrically to the one already stated, which contends that those three names, whether proper or appellative, must be fitted to one and only woman. And this indeed is the most constant and undoubted opinion of the Church (as the adversaries themselves confess), at least from the time of the most holy Pope Gregory the Great, that is, from the end of the sixth century, or the beginning of the seventh. Nor do we know that that possession was ever expressly disturbed until the year 1519, when those two Parisian doctors, among very many errors of that time, brought forth into the light this new and hitherto unheard-of opinion, whereby now not one Magdalene, but three altogether different women, and those indeed called Magdalenes, began to become known to the world, not without grave scandal, for the removing of which the severity of the Sorbonne had to be exerted, in the famous censure published on the ninth of November in the year 1521, which on the first of December of the same year it ratified, and which we have thought fit here opportunely to subjoin. Sought in vain in Bulaeus the historian of the University, it has been taken from the Bibliotheca critica, tome 2, from page 286.

Sorbonic Censure concerning the Three Magdalenes.

Concerning the one Magdalene, the Dean and Faculty of Theology in the venerable University of Paris, to all the faithful, greeting. in the year 1521 by the Sorbonne of Paris, Writing to the Romans, the Apostle Paul, the high-voiced herald of Christ, wholesomely exhorts the very cultivators of the orthodox faith in these words: "Let us follow after the things that are of peace, and let us keep one toward another the things that are of edification." Which salutary admonition, since all ought willingly to embrace it according to their strength, so especially those devoted to the profession of sacred Letters, whose proper office and part it is held to be to promote among the Christian people those things which are of edification, both as to doctrine and morals, but studiously to root out those things which present a stumbling-block to others.

[10] Since, therefore, in recent years, on the occasion of certain little works published into the light, accurately discussed, which have argued and proclaimed that there are several Magdalenes, it is known that many grave scandals have arisen among the people of God through those following the same opinion; and very many likewise could on that occasion be drawn away from a sincere devotion toward the one Magdalene, hitherto held as a mirror of fruitful penitence after a fall, and also torn away from the rite of the universal Church, which establishes one Magdalene in her Office. Nay rather, there might likewise be drawn into doubt and a certain ambiguity concerning the remaining institutions which are observed by ecclesiastical sanction, received now by long antiquity—whether they stand as the Church hands down, or otherwise; which would be most greatly injurious to the salvation of others, namely that nothing certain or undoubted would at last be left in the whole Church, if it were permitted to each one according to his own judgment, with impunity, to reject or calumniate traditions of this kind of the holy Fathers received through the Church: against which inconveniences it seemed to have been sufficiently provided by certain other writings of some.

[11] But since in these recent days we have received by certain documents and to the received opinion of the Church, that some again publicly recall the people of God into doubt, teaching them: whether according to the Evangelical history there was one Magdalene or several: hence it is that we, according to our office, striving to meet these stumbling-blocks of the little ones that have arisen, and to apply likewise a fitting remedy lest hereafter they spring up further; after frequent conferences held among ourselves on this matter, we define, decree, and determine, that the opinion of St. Gregory (who was once the President of the whole Church and the most wise author and moderator of the ecclesiastical Office)—that (although in the sacred texts of the Gospels various offices of the same sinful woman are read according to the diversity of her states) there is nevertheless one Mary Magdalene, who was the sister of Martha, that same sinful woman whose conversion Luke wrote in the seventh chapter of his Gospel—is to be embraced and held, as conformable to the Gospel of Christ, and consonant to the rite of the Catholic Church.

[12] prohibited by concordant assent. But writings against this opinion are in no way to be tolerated, we judge by concordant assent, and that it must be forbidden to all, and to those who are of our bosom, or are to be, we forbid, that hereafter any of them presume in sermons to the people, or in public disputations, or in books, or otherwise, to assert that there are several Magdalenes; or to call into doubt that there is one. Given in our congregation at the college of the Sorbonne, in its greater hall, specially convoked for these matters, on Saturday the ninth day of the month of November in the year of the Lord 1521. In testimony whereof we have ordered these presents to be signed by the hand of our chief Bedell or Notary, in our congregation at St. Mathurin, convoked by oath after Mass celebrated according to custom; where these things also were confirmed and ratified out of abundance on the first day of December 1521. By mandate of the Lords Dean and Masters of the sacred Faculty of Theology. Signed, J. de Neri.

* held

§ II. What things are chiefly adduced to persuade the diversity of three women.

The learned have long recognized the question to be most difficult, Long ago all the learned saw, as I had already begun to say, that it is most difficult, if not altogether impossible adynaton, to struggle successfully out of the proposed question, as long ago Cardinal Quiñones warned in the Roman Breviary arranged by himself and published at Paris in the year 1558, writing in the fifth lesson of the Office of the Saint herself: "Concerning Mary Magdalene there is no small controversy among the most learned and most grave men, some referring the deeds to one woman, others to several women": where he seems altogether to allude to those things which we have already noted to have been once transacted at Paris. So also Cardinal Baronius in his Annals, rolling the same stone at the year 32, ingenuously confesses that he is neither of such account, nor presumes so much of himself, as to presume to bear or propose a supreme sentence concerning these matters. Nor did Estius believe that he could do this, in the famous oration delivered at Douai on the twenty-first of July in the year 1609, which among the printed ones is the fourteenth, where he seems especially to contend against Baronius. And it is he who first, at the beginning of the following century, roused the most keen controversy that had been in some way laid to rest in the prior sixteenth century—alone among the Catholic Belgians, whom I at least have known, who openly and plainly departed from the ancient opinion: praiseworthy in this, that he set forth his mind with equal modesty and erudition. Thus he begins his academic prelude:

[14] among whom the doctor Estius "There is a celebrated question among theologians, hearers, whether the things which are commemorated in the Gospels—whether concerning the sinful woman, to whom many sins were remitted by the Lord because she loved much; or concerning Mary Magdalene, out of whom He cast seven demons, and who was solicitous about the sepulcher of the Lord; or concerning her who among three Evangelists is read to have anointed the Lord in Bethany—whether all these things belong to one and the same woman, or indeed are to be referred to different women, namely two, or three, or even four. For opinions vary, most thinking that she is one and the same: but others distributing the things which are narrated among two, others among three or four. Which question, since it pertains and conduces to the understanding of the evangelical narration, and to reconciling the sayings of the Evangelists among themselves, I in no way distrust that its treatment will be welcome to this most celebrated audience: especially because the occasion of the time also invites us hither. For whether that woman be one, or two, or several; tomorrow's day, on which throughout the whole Church the solemnity of blessed Mary Magdalene is kept, so appoints to us a commemoration, under one name, of those things which the Evangelical history brings forth whether of one or of several; so that even if there be several, yet the memory of none of them may seem to be passed over."

[15] "But this question was not lately raised, either in this or in the preceding century: striving to shake the received opinion, but concerning it even the ancient and chief Doctors of the Church spoke, as of a doubtful and controverted question." Which therefore Caesar Baronius, in his annotations to the Roman Martyrology, calls a most famous question, disputed from of old. Marianus Victorius also, in the Index of the works of St. Jerome, calls it most difficult, and everywhere in the Church controverted. I said that the chief Doctors of the Church spoke of it as doubtful: these are Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. But of these Fathers below in their place; let it suffice here to have shown beforehand from Estius himself the difficulty of the matter to be related, which most recently also the most learned Augustine Calmet duly acknowledged—more than once elsewhere praised by us—in the dissertation prefixed to his Commentary on Luke, from page 64: and so ought all wise men to speak, who, having entered upon that great sea, confess that they in no way find a way of swimming out successfully, at least with any certain appearance of truth.

[16] Not so did an anonymous writer seem to think (whom I understand to have been called Mauconduit), who in the year 1685 brought forth into the light a little dissertation of a certain Lovet, published half a century before, A bolder anonymous writer strives to overturn it, taken almost entirely from Estius, but clothed in new trappings, prefacing many things most piously, and heaping up most specious titles, by which he professes himself impelled to write; even so far indeed as to assert that he had imposed upon himself much honorary satisfaction, because he too had until then believed the most illustrious saints Mary Magdalene and Mary the Bethanian, foully defamed by a popular error, to be sinful women or harlots. Then he says that the censure of the Parisian theological Faculty described above was sufficiently retracted, by the approbation of Lovet's little work: nay rather that then the opinion of Faber and Clichtove began in some way to prevail, from which in the Breviary of the particular Parisian church a festivity had been assigned to both those Marys, and to each her own proper Offices. To speak in few words: in his pious and penitent style, he triumphs not without glory, as having wholly won the suit, and restored the most holy Virgins to their due honor.

[17] It will be helpful to render into Latin, and here for the greater part to weave in, Lovet's preface, rousing the arguments of Lovet, adopted by the anonymous writer, that it may appear in a brief scheme how ornately, and how speciously for persuasion, are put up for sale those things which in favor of a threefold Evangelical woman have from that time been studiously spread abroad in Gaul alone, relying chiefly on the arguments of Estius, as you will more clearly perceive from the following paragraph: while meanwhile others were not lacking who in favor of the received opinion of the Church zealously drew their pens in rivalry. Let Lovet's already-mentioned preface be first heard. Thus he addresses his readers: "This discourse will demonstrate to you that St. Mary the Bethanian, sister of St. Lazarus, is a distinct person from St. Mary Magdalene, and that neither one nor the other was ever that woman whom the Gospel calls a sinner. That distinction is recognized from the Gospel of Luke, when toward the end of chapter 7 he narrates that the sinful woman, after her sins were pardoned, was dismissed by Christ, and at the beginning of chapter 8, distinguishing Magdalene from the sinful woman thus dismissed, he says that Magdalene, out of whom seven demons had gone, followed Christ with the other women of the province of Galilee. And toward the end of chapter 10, distinguishing Magdalene from Mary the Bethanian, he writes that Jesus, having entered Judea, lodged in the house of Martha, who had a sister named Mary, who sat beside the feet of the Lord."

[18] and insisting from the various anointings, Lovet takes a second argument of distinction from the anointings performed on the body of Christ by different women, in different places, and at different times of His preaching, of which the first, Luke 7, in Galilee, in the city of Naim, in the house of Simon the Pharisee, while John was in prison, is connected with the year of Christ 32, done by a foreign woman, a notorious sinner in the city. The second anointing, of which John chapter 11 and 12, he places in the house of Martha in the year of Christ 34, long after John's martyrdom. But to these he adds a third, which is described in Matthew 26 and Mark 14, in the same castle of Bethany indeed, but in the house of Simon the Leper, four days after the already-mentioned second, and two days before the passion; and this indeed applied not to the feet but to the head, by a woman no less unknown than unnamed. Lovet subsumes: but from no text of the Gospel is it drawn out that Magdalene was present at any of these anointings; hence therefore the distinction of the women is consequent: nay, of not three only, but of four; in which Lovet either did not understand Estius, or certainly did not follow him.

[19] which Estius had before shut off; For, that I may remove hence at one and the same time the difficulty about the number of the anointings which recurs again and again, I altogether think it must be judged with Estius, that one and the same is related in Matthew, Mark, and John—not in the house of Martha, but at the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany a little before the passion, most certainly done by Mary the sister of Lazarus and Martha. Thus Estius has it, page 232: "First, I do not think one need labor in explaining the arguments of those who distinguish the narration of Matthew and Mark concerning the woman anointing the Lord in Bethany,

and the narration of John concerning Mary the sister of Lazarus, likewise anointing the Lord in Bethany, refer to different anointings; and much less those who even refer them to different persons: which Origen does … and, following him, Theophylact on Mark, and Euthymius on Matthew. For I altogether approve, in this part, what Augustine writes in book 2 on the agreement of the Evangelists, chapter 79, that there is no doubt that the three mentioned Evangelists narrate the same thing done in Bethany: where also the disciples (which all three commemorate) murmured against the woman, as though about the loss of the most precious ointment. For as to what seems to stand in the way—that one Evangelist narrates the ointment poured on the feet, the other two on the head—Augustine learnedly removes that apparent dissonance in the same place."

[20] Now Lovet's third evidence of distinction is from which nevertheless the rest are received. that those women are designated by different surnames among the Evangelists, for which he adduces our Maldonatus: "Everywhere the Evangelists call her Mary Magdalene, so that by that surname they may distinguish her from all the others who were called Marys." Fourthly he argues from the diversity of origin and dwelling, which, drawn out there more fully, it is enough here to have indicated, to be exhibited presently in full from Estius with others. Finally he urges that those holy Marys are asserted to be buried in different places; and indeed Magdalene, a most pure virgin to the very end of her life, is said to have suffered martyrdom at Ephesus and to be buried there; but the Bethanian must be laid at Jerusalem with her sister: inasmuch as the saint-scourge Launoy produced fourteen Martyrologies in all, and those indeed ancient, in which the holy Sisters are thus announced: "At Jerusalem, the birthday of the holy sisters Martha and Mary, of Lazarus." This, finally, is the conclusion of the preface, conceived in the words of Launoy himself: "It must be noted that by the name of Mary, Mary Magdalene is not to be understood, but another woman, according to the opinion of the ancient Fathers, who did not make Magdalene the sister of Lazarus, distinguished her from the sinful woman, and so established that several women are to be understood in the Gospels. On which matter let Estius be seen, in the most learned oration which he delivered concerning Magdalene, and her distinction from the sinful woman." This is at hand, from which nothing shall be left untouched.

[21] You have in brief compendium almost the chief arguments which are adduced by the more recent writers to overturn the opinion of the universal Church, Castellanus insisting on the said opinion, at least the Latin, concerning the unity and identity of the aforesaid women. The little book of the anonymous writer the illustrious Claudius Castellanus at once sent to our Elders—a man six hundred times most praised by us, although we mostly disagree with his particular opinions. He, as he was a most keen impugner of the unity, did not cease so to persuade us to embrace that Gallican opinion, which, I will freely confess, he had all but persuaded me of; so efficacious did those arguments seem which in his first edition of the Roman Martyrology with the Bimestrine notes he set forth splendidly and elegantly, and which here also, rendered into Latin, I exhibit, lest anyone wonder if in my Observations on Usuard I seemed to approach nearer to that opinion; yet so that I judged nothing was to be prematurely defined, remitting the decision of the whole controversy to this place. Let us therefore hear Castellanus himself, from the nineteenth of January, on which day he did not hesitate to announce Mary and her sister Martha. Thus there he gathered whatever he thought could be adduced in favor of his opinion, with such effort at persuading and with such enticement of words, that he blandly enough, nay even vigorously, allures the readers into the distinction.

[22] He begins from the more ancient Martyrologies, of which, since he was most skilled in them, he does not neglect to summon the greatest weight; he adduced all the most specious things, whence, having progressed to the Menaea, he shows from them the different festivities of each Mary: all of which will afterward be explained by us. Thence he glides to Flodoard, treating in the tenth century of the Bethanian temple of Lazarus and the two sisters. Then to the celebrated Vézelay history, namely how from Palestine itself the body of St. Mary the Bethanian was translated, and there found in the year 1265, and two years later, in the presence of the holy king Louis, translated into a silver chest by the Legate Simon, raised to the Roman See under the name of Martin IV in 1281, by whom a little before a rib, taken thence, had been granted to the church of Sens. He says that at that time that Mary was confused with Magdalene, which he tries to prove was by no means done a hundred years before, by the authority of St. Bernard, which will recur in its place; as also the whole Vézelay tradition, compared with the Marseilles one, on which Castellanus ought not to have leaned so much: more pressing are his arguments drawn from the very texts of the Gospels, which deserve to be rendered in his own words:

[23] that he might draw us into his opinion. "Nothing is so astonishing," he says, "as how this confusion (of three women) is to those who read the Gospels, affected by no prejudice: for besides that at the very same time when Christ dismisses the converted sinful woman from the house of Simon the Pharisee, presently there come forth Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and other women, from whom, since they had been cured of malignant spirits, following the Lord with the Apostles, and ministering to Him of their substance, who with Him undertake a journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, two years before the passion, toward the end of which Christ, passing through Bethany, first visited Mary, Martha, Lazarus: besides these, I say, most evident indications of a real distinction, it can be observed that the characters of mind and disposition of those three women are as opposite as can be; those especially who are so naturally described as between Mary Magdalene and Mary the Bethanian. Magdalene follows Christ wherever He goes; Mary never follows: Magdalene ministers to Christ on the journeys; Mary does not even at home care for the things that pertain to ministry: Magdalene everywhere seeks the Lord, Mary tranquilly awaits Him at home: Magdalene is always acting; Mary is always contemplating… It would certainly have been more consonant to reason to confuse Magdalene with Martha, so everywhere do they appear most alike to each other, so with equal agility busying themselves about frequent ministry." Thus far Castellanus graphically, whose remaining arguments are common with the rest.

§ III. The chief arguments of the adversaries are set forth.

Reducing these to three classes, Estius We are gradually paving the way, that all the weights of the reasons may more manifestly appear by which the Parisian church, and the Orleans, Vienne, and Cluny congregations (these alone are said hitherto to have changed the Office) were impelled to deviate from the Roman rite. I do not deny that their arguments are plausible enough, nor will I deny that I long and much inclined to that side, until, all things rightly weighed, a way appeared by which all those things, however specious and solid, are abundantly dissolved from the Gospels, from reason, from the firm consensus of very many Fathers and interpreters, and from the undoubted tradition of the Church—as I think will be plain from the following paragraphs—no new ways or means being applied, no systems fabricated (as Lamy, Mauduit, Pezron, and others did), no twisting of the word "sinful woman," but by adhering to the plain and perspicuous sense of the Fathers and interpreters. But that you may more clearly perceive that the standard-bearer of today's impugners of the unity is the doctor Estius, I have judged it must be here adduced, the context of his oration, to whose several heads solutions will be subjoined in order.

The arguments of Estius against the unity.

But that the number of them may be held threefold, these three things must be proved: that the sinful woman and Mary Magdalene are not the same: 1, he argues from the series of Luke's Gospel, again, that the sinful woman is not the same with Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus: likewise that Mary Magdalene is not the same with the sister Mary of Lazarus: but for those for whom a twofold number suffices, it will also have sufficed to be able to establish any one of these three. That, therefore, which was the first of these three, is chiefly shown from the very series of the evangelical narration in Luke. For when in the seventh chapter he completes the history of the sinful and penitent woman, he keeps silent her name—not for that reason (which some bring forward as a reason) because he wished to consult her fame and honor; for what did it profit for consulting her honor that the Evangelist kept silent the name, if everywhere all the faithful throughout the Church were going to know who she was: or why did Scripture not by the same reason suppress the names of David and Peter, when it disclosed to us their crimes? But he kept silent, in the manner in which the Evangelists kept silent the names of others, and also of other women who were praiseworthy: such as of that woman with an issue of blood, and the Canaanite woman, and of her whom this same Evangelist Luke narrates to have raised her voice from the crowd, and said to the Lord: "Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the breasts which Thou hast sucked."

[26] "But when the same Luke, immediately after, and with no other narration interposed, in that, the sinful woman being dismissed, Magdalene is at once introduced, writes about the women who, cured of malignant spirits and infirmities, followed Christ, and ministered to Him of their substance; among them he designates first by her name Mary Magdalene, not by a word signifying that she is the same of whom he had just spoken. Nay rather the narration declares that she is not the same: for to the sinful woman it is said by the Lord in the last words: 'Go in peace': which He had also said to the woman with an issue of blood healed by Him, and to the adulterous woman, John 8: 'Go,' He says, 'sin no more.' Which words are certainly those of one dismissing the woman from Himself; otherwise He would have said to her what He said to others: 'Come, follow me.'"

[27] "But you will say, of her own accord the woman, having first gathered money from her substance, followed the Lord, whom, accompanying the Lord, it were wicked to imagine such a one; that she might show herself grateful for so great a benefit received. This I doubtless think true of Mary Magdalene, freed from so many demons, but of the sinful woman it is not probable; nay it can seem quite improbable, by one argument alone: for by what reason would Christ the Lord, who so often and so gravely warns that scandals must be guarded against, and who through His Apostle commands, saying: 'Providing good things not only before God, but also before all men': by what reason, I say, would He allow a sinful woman, an infamous woman, and, to say it more openly, a public harlot (for so she is called by the Fathers), recently converted and a neophyte, to approach His company, and remain in it; where so many calumnies of adversaries were prepared, so many offenses of the weak at hand, even of Christ's own disciples: or who today would approve anyone doing or suffering such a thing? How indecorous it would be, for a woman lately a harlot and infamous, to converse familiarly and assiduously with Mary the mother of the Lord, and the other honorable women of unblemished fame, who followed Christ, and rendered dutiful services both to Him living and dead?"

[28] nor can it be said when the demons were cast out. "Now from the history itself another argument comes, that the sinful woman and Magdalene cannot be said to be one. For she is narrated to have been cured of seven demons: which, although some expound of a spiritual cure, that is, of the expulsion of vices by which that sinful woman had been possessed, as we mentioned above: yet most interpreters understand it of a bodily ejection of demons, as the words sound."

"For it belongs to historians to use plain words in their narrations, and not to speak allegorically. Now Luke and Mark expressly testify that out of this woman, whom they call Mary Magdalene, seven demons had been cast. Nor indeed is that to be taken otherwise than as the same Luke in the same place narrates of the other women, among whom he numbers Magdalene, saying: 'And certain women who had been cured of malignant spirits and infirmities; Mary who is called Magdalene, out of whom seven demons had gone,' etc. It is asked, therefore, when she was cured of this obsession of demons: whether before she anointed the feet of the Lord and heard from Him: 'Thy sins are forgiven thee': or after that time: for that this cure happened at the very time when she did and heard that, reason does not allow. For by no means would the Evangelist have kept silent this bodily miracle joined with the spiritual: especially on so great an occasion of speaking. But if she was cured before: how did she not then also cease to be a harlot, affected with so great a benefit? For certainly what was said to others would have been said to her also by the Lord: 'Go and sin no more.' If she is said to have been cured afterward; why, after her sins were forgiven her, and after she heard, 'Go in peace,' was she still possessed by demons? Baronius tries to solve this dilemma in his Annals: but whether he does so rightly and solidly, or otherwise, let his reader judge. But enough of the first member."

[29] He urges, 2, that the sinful woman cannot be the sister of Martha, "There follows the second, namely that the sinful woman is not the same with Mary the sister of Lazarus. Which they prove thus: that sinful woman was a Galilean; for that what Luke narrates of her happened in Galilee, the context of the history declares. The interpreters also agree, who are pleased to hold that the thing happened either in Naim or in Capernaum, cities of Galilee. But Mary the sister of Lazarus was of Jerusalem, from the castle or town of Bethany near Jerusalem; as also her sister and brother; as is clear from those things which John commemorates about these three: nor is she anywhere read to have dwelt in Galilee or elsewhere. Next, that woman was infamous; this one was held among the Jews honorable and distinguished; so that for honor's sake many of the Jews, as John relates, visited her and Martha her sister, to console them over their brother's death: which it is not likely they would do, if she had dishonored her family by an unchaste and harlot-like conversation. To these now add: that Christ the Lord would not so familiarly, with His disciples, have frequented the house of this Mary, and much less would He have chosen even nightly lodging with her (which it is established from the Gospels that He did); if she had ever been a harlot, and that publicly infamous. For the familiar and domestic intimacy of such persons, even after penitence performed, must be shunned even by holy men; at least lest any weak one be scandalized. Nor indeed would the Jews have omitted to fasten this calumny upon Christ and His disciples, who are read to have accused Him of so many other things. For those who said: 'This man eats and drinks with sinners': would they not much more have said: 'This man chooses lodging with an infamous woman'? And where is the rule which He prescribed to the preachers of His Gospel, saying: 'Into whatever city or castle you enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and there remain'? Worthy, that is, honorable, and of good fame; namely lest the Gospel be ill spoken of on account of the host's wicked or suspected life."

[30] "It remains that we say something also about the third member; that Mary Magdalene was different from Mary the sister of Lazarus. nor Magdalene either, from a different homeland and other circumstances. First, this seems to be shown by an argument common with the preceding; that she too was a Galilean, sprung from Magdalum, a castle of Galilee. For she is numbered by the Evangelists among those women who had followed Christ from Galilee. But that Mary the sister of Lazarus was of Jerusalem has already been proved. For that she did not migrate thither from Galilee, as others will have it, appears sufficiently from this, that at Jerusalem she had many acquaintances; who, as has already been said, for honor's sake went to her to console her over her deceased brother. Moreover, Mary the sister of Lazarus is not read to have been occupied about the burial of the Lord, as neither was Martha her sister, though very diligent and solicitous: but this is singularly and by name ascribed to Mary Magdalene, who performed it, aided by her companion women, who together with her had ascended from Galilee to Jerusalem. For Mary and Martha were not of the number of those who assiduously accompanied Christ for the sake of ministry: but only of them is it read in Luke and in John, that they were wont to provide Christ the lodging of their house. Who, when they relate any such thing, nowhere surname Magdalene: but when the burial of the Lord is treated, the name of Mary Magdalene is heard. But these things suffice. I omit to recount the authors both ancient and more recent, by whose testimonies these several members, or all together, may be proved. For the brevity of the time granted us for speaking does not permit it."

[31] "This I add, that it can seem that in this matter of which we treat, there happened what elsewhere sometimes happens: that different histories are brought together into one, He thinks, finally, that different names have been confused into one person. especially where there is agreement in the name. As the Greeks Nazianzen and Metaphrastes, and among the Latins Prudentius, made one out of two Cyprians, which also crept into certain Martyrologies. So Simon the Apostle and Simeon the disciple, son of Cleophas, some make one. So some join the histories of the passion of Philip the Apostle and the deacon, as of one. Whether this also happened in the case of Dionysius the Athenian and the Parisian, let those skilled in antiquities examine. Certainly it is established that in certain Martyrologies they are separated by day and place and kind of passion. So also, conversely, a plurality of names has sometimes divided one person into two; which I hold vehemently probable to have happened in the case of Bartholomew and Nathanael. You have understood, hearers, by what arguments and reasons the several members of the partition set above rest; from which it seems to be effected that a threefold number of those women, concerning whom this oration was instituted, is to be acknowledged. He to whom this is not pleasing, it will be necessary for him to answer these things."

[32] From these heads the arguments of others are taken In this artful oration of Estius nothing is omitted which could more speciously be adduced to persuade the distinction of three Evangelical women; and it is plain, as I said above, that the chief arguments of Lovet, the anonymous writer, and Castellanus are drawn from that fount, but here and there somewhat amplified, but chiefly by Anquetin, parish priest of Léon in Normandy, keenly contending against Lamy, Mauduit, and Pezron, with whom, foot to foot, the anonymous writer last engaged in a long dissertation of 286 pages in quarto of small type, published at Paris in the year 1713, whose author Calmet taught us, namely Trevet, curate of Gomicourt, whom by that proper name we shall more often address below.

[33] to which we do not add quibbles easily solvable. Further, to dissolve the aforesaid arguments let us pursue the series of Estius, neglecting the other objections of various men, in which less weight seems to be, and by which this treatise would be too much extended: such as those which we said were published by Anquetin and Trevet, and whose logical subtleties we judged could be neglected: as that Mary the Bethanian, since she was a Jewess, could not have been a sinful woman, no more than Magdalene, inasmuch as in Deuteronomy 23 it is written: "There shall be no harlot among the daughters of Israel"; which is far too easily solved from those women who it is most certain were infected in Israel with that stain. As to what more closely regards Magdalene, if she was possessed, she cannot be called a sinful woman: let it suffice to have answered, that the woman was instructed by the demon in that art, and all so arranged, that, if she was truly a harlot, she enticed her lovers to sin with so much greater enticements. Very many other things of this kind there are, with recounting and refuting which one by one we were unwilling to fill our Acta, sufficiently increasing from elsewhere.

[34] The things which are adduced from authority Those who contend for the distinction from authorities draw them: 1, from St. Irenaeus, enumerating all those things which are handed down about the deeds of Christ the Savior almost from Luke's Gospel alone, where he relates the penitence of the sinful woman in such a way that, since the other Evangelists did not so treat of her, he ought to have thought that she was plainly another woman from Magdalene and Mary the Bethanian. 2, from the Apostolic Constitutions, where the pseudo-Clement, book 3, chapter 6, most expressly distinguishes Magdalene from Mary the Bethanian, which is almost the only argument in this part for the distinction of Vossius, from whom neither does Cotelier much recede, to say nothing of what from the same place our leader Turrianus disputed. 3, there are adduced Theophilus, sixth bishop of Antioch from Peter, Origen, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius, and Nicephorus, who all, however much they establish a distinction between the anointing women, do not closely pertain to the present question, just as neither do the several Latins of whom above in §1 we spoke, certainly favoring us in this, that, some confusion being admitted, they do not so greatly recede from the total; to whom they add Ambrose and Jerome, who seem rather to have doubted than to have asserted anything certain.

[35] Nevertheless by those few authorities we are by no means terrified: they are of less weight: long ago the adversaries confessed, certainly ought to confess, that no great support accrues to them from the Fathers or from tradition, so that Estius therefore prudently abstained from them; but whatever little could accrue, all that you will find solved in the praised dissertation of Trevet from page 184, where he most conveniently explains the mind of Irenaeus; he deservedly rejects the Apostolic Constitutions with Baronius and others; he utterly snatches Theophilus from the adversaries; he retorts Origen and Chrysostom against them; but Theophylact, Euthymius, and Nicephorus, as later than St. Gregory the Great, he places outside the controversy, when the tradition of the first centuries is treated, which we in §5 shall somewhat more fully expound, when we shall first have weighed all the arguments of Estius; namely those which deserved to be set forth, and which in this paragraph have been most faithfully set forth in his own words.

[36] For I judge worthy of commiseration what he tried to dig out of Gavantus, namely that Pope Clement VIII ordered some ancient hymn in the Office of St. Mary Magdalene to be changed, such as also many other things which scarcely deserve to be alleged. led by this reason alone, that there she was too openly confused with the sister of Lazarus, and was said to have been liable to many crimes. The words of Gavantus, enumerating the hymns, are on page 70, "Nardo Maria pistico," where he only says that it was changed in the revision under Clement VIII, no cause at all being alleged, which it pleased Estius and others to suppose. I indeed marvel that learned men should stain paper with minutiae of this kind, and priests too, who at least yearly must recite those things which in the Missal and

the Breviary are prescribed, where the Gospel is Luke 7 concerning the sinful woman, and all the rest speak of the penitent Magdalene, but the prayer most expressly expresses: "Whose prayers being entreated, Thou didst raise her brother Lazarus alive from the dead after four days." These things would have had to be removed by Clement, if he had ever even most remotely thought of a distinction of the women. Equally ridiculous is it, that the Church does not confuse the three women, but undertook to celebrate the actions of three different women under one festivity. Is this said seriously enough? Away, I beseech, I would venture to say, with trifles, the likes of which, born in Spain, the illustrious Nicholas Antonio long ago most solidly ground to pieces, from whose Adversaria our Pinius copied things which I would adduce here, were not the authority of the pseudo-chronicles already sufficiently enervated. Let us respond to somewhat more solid matters.

§ IV. And the same are refuted.

To the first, drawn from Luke's narration, in which immediately after, and with no other narration interposed, In Luke's narration a sufficient interval he subjoins to the dismissal of the anonymous penitent Magdalene following Christ with the other women, not signifying by a word that she is the same of whom he had just spoken; it is answered, that these are not so closely joined by the Evangelist that a longer interval cannot and ought not to be conceived between chapters 7 and 8. But lest we here litigate by divining, all these things were once wont to be cited by the holy Fathers, as St. Bernard, sermon 22 on the Canticle; Nicholas of Clairvaux, sermon on St. Mary Magdalene, among the works of St. Bernard; Godfrey of Vesten, sermon 9; Peter Abbot of Celle, sermon 5, on St. Mary Magdalene; St. Thomas in the Sum. part 1, question 21, article 4, to the first; and St. Bonaventure, Compendium of the Truth of Theology, on sanctifying grace, book 5, chapter 19. These Fathers, I say, saw all those things which here Estius commemorates with so great an apparatus, and yet did not doubt that she who is called a sinful woman in chapter 7 was the very same Magdalene who in the following chapter is called by her proper name.

[38] Many Fathers found Lest here I fill the pages with texts, let it be enough to have brought forward a few. St. Bernard's words are most clear: "In the odor of justice Mary Magdalene ran, to whom many sins were forgiven because she loved much: assuredly just and holy, and no longer a sinner as the Pharisee reproached." So speak the rest; namely the cited Nicholas among St. Bernard's works, treating of Mary Magdalene: "For there is a good ointment, which Mary poured on the feet of the Savior, and there is a better one which the same (if however the same) poured over the head of Him reclining." So St. Thomas: "As of Mary Magdalene it is read, many sins were forgiven her, because she loved much." Likewise St. Bonaventure: "The second is, that it be formed by charity, as of Mary Magdalene, whom faith made whole, and to whom were forgiven," etc.—to whom it seemed no wonder that in chapter 7 the sinful woman's name is kept silent, for whatever cause, which we confess is unknown to us; just as that, why Matthew and Mark suppressed the name of her who, it is established, made the other anointing in Bethany; why, I say, Luke there kept silent the name of her whom a little after he signed by her proper appellation—on which matter see Trevet from page 95, diligently shaking out the several corners of Anquetin.

[39] so that all is easily composed. The cited holy Fathers and others also saw and understood, and it happened thereafter, both "and He Himself was making a journey," etc., not to designate a thing so immediate that very many things did not intervene before she voluntarily joined herself to Christ's company, no longer a sinful woman but the just and holy Magdalene, always amiable in her strong love; most constantly mindful of the double benefit received, and most devoted to Christ even unto death. Nor indeed was she so dismissed that she was compelled perpetually to desert Christ, which some ineptly urge from those words, "Go in peace": nor, as Estius will have it, did she have to be invited to follow, whom from that time charity so urged that she could be separated from her chosen Spouse only most unwillingly. And by these things, unless I am mistaken, the first argumentation of Estius is abundantly dissolved, extended more verbosely indeed by the anonymous writer, but by Trevet and others no less closely and solidly refuted.

[40] What is said of scandal does not fall upon Christ, Estius presses with greater effort and ornament from the reason of scandal, which he believed would certainly arise, if Christ admitted into His company a woman formerly a sinner. This seems the scruple of the more delicate, by which the Fathers praised above did not allow themselves to be disturbed, being by no means unskilled in all those proprieties. Let us add boldly that the condition of the sinful woman did not terrify Christ, even though you should say she had been a harlot, which however is not drawn out clearly enough from the Gospel—besides that I am not ignorant that the appellation of harlot can be extenuated in many ways; but whatever be the case, Christ, who came to save sinners, ought no more to repel from Himself a penitent so noble and generous, and rendered more illustrious by her conversion, than the Samaritan woman or the adulteress; He who elsewhere says that publicans and harlots would go before others into the kingdom of God, who finally had a publican for an Apostle, solicitous about nothing less than the scandals of the Pharisees—to say nothing that she was of such integrity of morals, and of so chaste an aspect, that not even the least suspicion of unchastity could come into anyone's mind.

[41] He who desires to see these things more fully weighed and solved according to every jot, nor did the things which would displease among us give offense to the Jews. let him go to the dissertation of Trevet, so often praised and to be more often cited by us, from page 84. But as Christ deservedly despised these things, so I would not think that His most holy mother Mary or the other women were on that account more delicate, the love being manifest with which she followed the Lord, and the Lord her. Those assumed and rather elegantly depicted proprieties make a show at first appearance, but solidly prove nothing; for that which in these our regions would somewhere vehemently offend the eyes—if penitent women followed their director in throngs, and conversed more familiarly with Him—that among the Jews was harmless, as the adversaries themselves are compelled to confess, so that whatever is here so speciously adduced, in no way at all injures the received opinion of the Church.

[42] Estius presses again with that dilemma, which he insinuates was not sufficiently solved by Baronius. The hinge of the matter turns on this, The dilemma of Estius about the time Baronius had long ago solved, whether Magdalene, possessed by seven demons, was cured of them by Christ the Lord before the remission of her sins; or indeed after the remission itself. For at the very time when she heard, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," he does not think reason allows that this happened. But if before, how did she not cease to be a harlot? If after, why after her sins were forgiven was she possessed by demons? I indeed think that Baronius responded to all these so aptly that I hold it persuaded that he plainly satisfied, and that Estius asks in vain whether he did this rightly and solidly, or otherwise. But what at last does the orator aim at with these? Let him have this answer, that she can be said to have been cured, with the other energumens, or perhaps apart, of those seven demons, one month or another, and, if you will, three, before she was fully freed from the weight of the sins which perhaps had been the cause of the possession.

[43] Freed from that plague, considering the disease of her mind, she sought an occasion by which her conversion might be rendered as celebrated and here again the whole matter is easily explained. as her past life had appeared blameworthy; and having found it, she burst into the banquet, exhibited public penitence, changed her love—perhaps before carnal and lustful—into a most chaste charity toward Christ, and deserved to hear that many sins were forgiven her, because she had loved much. What here, I beseech, creates so much trouble? Unless perhaps we presume to teach the Evangelist by what method he ought to have instituted his narrations. Magdalene, free from both great evils, having renounced the pomp of the world, proposed to reserve for herself that part of her own goods with which she might minister to her Beloved, never to be deserted, which at last was her final office. These things indeed in few words, which you will find most fully disputed by Trevet. Which if the followers and defenders of Estius do not think sufficient, let them themselves seek from the praised holy Fathers more fitting solutions, or acquiesce in the words of Baronius, who indeed in this part suffered nothing to be desired. Now I proceed to the other article of Estius, by which he contends that the sinful woman is not the same with Mary the sister of Lazarus and Martha.

[44] This argument consists of a double member: 1, that that Mary was a Jewess and of Jerusalem, and so never dwelt in Galilee: What is established from a different homeland 2, that it is not likely that Christ would have dealt so familiarly with those sisters and brother, so as to lodge in their house more than once, if Mary had before been a sinner in the city, which of her, who is everywhere called a most pure virgin, is not to be presumed. To the first I respond, that the holy Fathers were by no means deterred by those incongruities—Eusebius of Emesa, Peter Chrysologus, Paschasius Radbertus, Alcuin, Franco the second, abbot of Vendôme, Peter Damian, abbot Rupert, St. Norbert, Lyranus, and others—from most plainly confusing Mary the Bethanian (for the adversaries the second anointer) with the sinful woman of Naim or of Capernaum, as you may see in the places cited in Calmet on Luke, page 83, which here to enumerate one by one I have thought superfluous; I shall subjoin below St. Augustine and others speaking more at length: yet lest I pass over anything untouched.

[45] proves anything equally, I do not fear to say that Mary the Bethanian was not so a Jewess, if she was truly born in Judea itself, that she could never dwell in Galilee, or at least sojourn there, and perhaps at some time grow accustomed to some native man; whether from zeal for a freer life, or because she possessed her goods and substance there, and there, converted, followed Christ, until, invited by her, He came into Bethany—she long before as afterward adhering to the Lord with the other women, until she herself revisited her sick brother Lazarus, who being recalled to life, as she had before done in Galilee while still penitent, so now holy and just, she anointed the feet and also the head, as if for burial—which both anointings suit one woman rather than two, three, or four, however greatly the opinions of the holy Fathers, especially the Greeks, vary on this point. As to what is thrown back again about scandal, you may reckon the scruple of Estius and others a true one: but that the Jews came to Jerusalem to console the sisters at the death of Lazarus, concludes anything equally; for since Mary had already for nearly two years so solemnly repented of her former life, then her former things could be reckoned utterly obliterated: besides that that concourse of the people of Jerusalem is augmented by exaggeration: it must be reckoned to have been far greater, which happened not so much for the sisters' or Christ's own sake, as that they might see Lazarus, whom, raised from the dead, they could most hardly bring themselves to believe.

[46] The fifth argument Estius thus sets forth:

"It remains that we say something also about the third member; namely that Mary Magdalene was different from the sister of Lazarus. as is shown from daily usage. But here again return the different homelands or dwellings, resting on no solid foundation, unless it rightly follows that Lazarus and Martha were never in Galilee or Jerusalem, because this is nowhere expressed in the Gospel." Away with minutiae: would anyone dare to think that they were so fixed to Bethany? As if—to use a popular argument—a Brabantine woman could not daily cross over into the neighboring provinces of Flanders, Zeeland, Holland, Guelders, Hainaut, Liège, or Namur, to which Brabant is no more bordering than Judea to Galilee; which yet happens everywhere, as is most well known even to children among us. But that she had many acquaintances at Jerusalem, by Estius's good leave, proves not a whit. As to what must be said about the burial, it will be ours to expound a little more fully, when we come to the Marseilles tradition. It is likewise gratuitously asserted that Mary and Martha were not of the number of those who assiduously accompanied Christ for the sake of ministry. Let the "assiduously" pass; whence will Estius prove to us that they never followed—at least Mary, whom, if we believe the Gospel, I would say could scarcely be torn from the love of Christ, from Christ's side?

[47] The sixth he grounds on the surname of Magdalene, which is never ascribed to Mary the Bethanian, but always to the Galilean, Nor the different names and surnames as they contend is plain to one reading the Gospels: but certainly with a vain effort. The surname of Magdalene is added whenever she must be distinguished from her companions or from women of the same name; for where this does not recur, she is called simply Mary. In Matthew and Mark, nowhere placed together with her sister Martha or brother Lazarus, she is everywhere marked with her characteristic; but in Luke and John, according to the diversity of the occasions in which she appears, sometimes with the addition, as Luke 8, when she is introduced with the Galilean women; but in chapter 10, dwelling with her sister, she is called no otherwise than Mary: where namely there was no danger of confusion: but again where she is joined to other women, Luke 24, she obtains her surname. So in John, chapters 11 and 12, there is no mention of Magdalene, but where in chapters 19 and 20 she could be confused with others, the distinctive of Magdalene is added.

[48] What more do we seek here? Mary, conspicuous by her most ardent charity, They tear Mary from Magdalene. everywhere so shines forth that everywhere you may in some way smell the same woman. The Lord addresses her as Mary, but she, with the familiar word to which she had grown accustomed sitting beside His feet, repeats "Rabboni," which he would be obstinate who denied to fit the very Bethanian. Lest I do what has been done, let me here again refer the readers to the cited dissertation, in which from page 40 the whole question about those surnames is exhausted. What finally Estius adds about the confusion or duplication of names could be retorted against him from the Gospel itself. Does Peter therefore cease to be one, because he is now surnamed Simon, now Simon Bar-Jona, now Simon of John, now Simon Peter? Further, from ecclesiastical history one would not have to labor much to compile a good large list of them. I will freely confess that the arguments of the excellent man are set forth with such art that they allure to some assent; but anyone easily understands that such things are not those which compel many (of the Belgians certainly I have known none) to desert the most ancient opinion of the Church, by what authorities and arguments it is established I shall make you shortly perceive.

§ V. What the ecclesiastical tradition on this question was and is today.

In what acceptation is to be understood that tradition of which we here treat, has already been sufficiently set forth above; that it does not closely regard faith, we plainly assent to Estius. The ecclesiastical tradition is rashly impugned It is treated of that tradition which in the Church, at least the Latin, was thus admitted from every age, and by far the greatest part of the holy Fathers and interpreters, nay by all, I would venture to say, in that sense at least, that before the sixteenth century scarcely any is found who did not confuse the sinful woman either with Magdalene or with Mary the Bethanian: by which reason it can altogether be said that those strive against the most ancient and most common sense of the Church and of all the faithful, and are at the least guilty of some novelty, who so easily impugn those most received opinions, and most expressly stated in all the sacred Offices. For those who weigh these things maturely and moderately judge that the falsity of an opinion of that kind must be shown by evident demonstration, before it is so boldly risen against: which once the illustrious bishop of Rochester thus expressed, disputing against Faber, in supposition 12, folio 14: "Against the most received and most strengthened custom of the Church, credence must be given to no one, unless he brings either an irrefutable testimony from the Scriptures, or a wholly indissoluble reason." Now therefore let us come to the Fathers, of whom those who perhaps did not so expressly assert the unity of the controverted women, that they certainly fought against the distinction of three, is most clear.

[50] received in the first and second century; Concerning this tradition again the praised Trevet has most widely discoursed, namely from page 177 to 234, from whom and from others it will be enough for us to taste those things which suffice for the proposed argument. But that the whole matter may proceed from the very cradle of the Church, for the first centuries Origen will bear witness that the opinion current in his time was that one and the same woman had anointed Christ in Naim and in Bethany, himself erring in this, that he thought there were not merely two, as now the adversaries will have it, but three: "But I rather agree that there are three." But come, let us begin our tradition from Tertullian, in his book On Modesty, page (in my copy) 634 of la Barre's edition, thus writing: "But if He also by deeds produced something of the kind for sinners, as when He permitted to the sinful woman the touch of His body, washing His feet with tears, and wiping them with her hair, and anointing (elsewhere, with ointment) inaugurating His burial." Which words, although they be not most clear, yet insinuate openly enough that both anointings are attributed to one and the same woman, and the latter indeed as ordained for burial, in which Mary is certainly involved, both she who poured out the ointment for burying, and she who bought the spices, that coming with the other women she might anoint Christ.

[51] likewise the third, fourth, etc. To the same third century pertains Clement of Alexandria, book 2 of the Paedagogus, chapter 8, mentioning the anointing of the sinful woman, but not so perspicuously confusing her with either Mary that his authority can be called peremptory. Nearer to the matter comes Victor of Antioch, not that he himself favors the assertors of the unity, but that he cites others who by no means distinguish Mary the sister of Martha from the sinful woman. His words are: "Apollinarius, however, and Theodore say that the same woman is described among all the Evangelists, but that John pursued that history more accurately than the rest." Nor would I greatly insist on proving these further, since the adversaries themselves, Tillemont and others, do not dare to gainsay the cited authority. Concerning Saints Ambrose and Jerome I shall not enter upon a long disputation, for the chief vindicators of the unity do not deny that they varied, or at least somewhat doubted, although Trevet contends by many arguments that Ambrose stands with him. Him the praised interpreter Calmet placed among the spectators or indifferent; who, why he thought the same of St. Augustine, I do not so clearly perceive: he certainly, if any other, most openly confuses Mary the Bethanian with the sinful woman.

[52] most notably by St. Augustine Hear him, book 2 on the agreement of the Evangelists, chapter 79, of the newest edition, tome 3: "Now let us consider concerning the woman and the precious ointment which was done in Bethany. For Luke, although he commemorates a similar deed, and the name agrees, of him with whom the Lord was banqueting—for he too calls him Simon: since it is not against nature or against the custom of men, that if one man can have two names, much more can two men have one name; it is rather credible that that Simon was another, not the leper, in whose house this was done in Bethany. For neither does Luke say that the thing he narrates was done in Bethany: and although he does not commemorate the city or castle where it was done, yet his narration does not seem to be occupied in the same place. Therefore I think nothing else must be understood, save that it was not indeed another woman who as a sinner then came to the feet of Jesus, and kissed them, and washed them with tears, and wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with ointment: to whom the Lord, a similitude being applied of two debtors, said that many sins were forgiven, because she loved much; but that the same Mary did this twice, once namely that which Luke narrated, when first approaching with that humility and tears she deserved the remission of sins."

[53] "For this John also, although not as Luke narrated how it had been done, so clearly asserted yet commending Mary herself, commemorated, when he had already begun to speak of Lazarus to be raised, before He came into Bethany. Which he there narrates thus: 'Now there was a certain man,' he says, 'sick, Lazarus, of Bethany, of the castle of Mary and Martha his sister. And Mary was she who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.' By saying this John attests to Luke, who narrated that this was done in the house of a certain Pharisee Simon. Now therefore Mary had already done this. But that which she did again in Bethany is another thing, which does not pertain to Luke's narration, but is equally narrated by three, namely John, Matthew, and Mark." Thus far Augustine, led by no scruple at all against confusing Mary the Bethanian with the sinful woman in most express words.

[54] A feeble weapon is that which the adversaries try to hurl from tract 49 on John, so that no place for escape remains. where from an inserted parenthesis they contend that Augustine doubted; whom rather, from the common sense of the Latin Fathers and interpreters, they ought to judge to have more expressly declared what in the aforesaid place he had not sufficiently explained—to say nothing that it is not so certain which of the already-mentioned works Augustine wrote first. Behold the very words: "Behold that sister of Lazarus (if however she is the same who anointed the feet of the Lord with ointment, and wiped them with her hair which she had washed with tears) was better raised than her brother, was freed from the great mass of evil habit. For she was a famous sinner: and of her it is said, Many sins are forgiven her, because she loved much." If you insist that from these it is not yet established that Augustine confused Magdalene with the sinful woman; the response is easy; that one confusion suffices to make it plain that the holy Doctor was not so indifferent as to come to the present controversy as a spectator rather than a supporter; besides that from those places it seems it can be gathered not obscurely that Augustine supposed this very thing, inasmuch as it was not turned into a question.

[55] Either I am mistaken, or the impugners of the women's unity here mix in much word-battling, Mary the Bethanian being confused with the sinful woman, to bend Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine into their own party by the neck, or at least with Estius to remove them from the confusion; whom if you read attentively, you will understand that they so spoke as rather to suppose the confusion of Mary Magdalene than to think it needed any proof, the whole difficulty being reduced to Mary the Bethanian alone, whom Origen, Chrysostom, and others could never persuade themselves to have been a sinful woman: "For it is not credible that Mary, whom Jesus loved, sister of Martha, who had chosen the better part, was a sinner in the city"—Augustine most openly asserting against the identity, Ambrose somewhat timidly (unless to him, which I indeed do not think, the preface of the Milanese Missal can be ascribed), Jerome, at least by somewhat doubting, asserting; no mention anywhere being made of Mary Magdalene, inasmuch as they supposed that she, from the expulsion of those seven demons, was that very sinful woman. For that some torture Ambrose so as to have called Magdalene a virgin, is most inept; for by the same argument all the women who followed Christ from Galilee would be referred to the number of virgins.

[56] The confusion of Magdalene is with certainty enough supposed. Many other testimonies are adduced which for brevity's sake I pass over, that I may also add St. Peter Chrysologus, thinking the same as Augustine, in his homily on chapter 7 of Luke, on these words "and she kissed His feet," which he interprets in this manner: "Intervening tears went before, that devout kisses might follow, because tears are a proof of sanctification, kisses are indications of reconciliation"; and to these words "and she anointed with ointment," he adds: "We have learned, another Evangelist relating it, that the woman poured oil over the head of the Lord. It is not therefore what this woman does an act of soft and carnal obsequiousness, but plainly it is a sacrament of humanity, because in the head of Christ is God, in the feet are those who evangelize peace." Nor do Nonnus on John chapter 12, Andrew of Crete in his sermon on Palm Sunday, Cyril of Alexandria, and Eusebius of Emesa in his homily on the fifth day of the Lord's passion (or perhaps another under his name, not inferior in age), seem to say anything more; to whom it is permitted to add Paulinus, epistle 4 to Severus, speaking almost so as to seem even markedly to indicate Magdalene.

[57] St. Gregory follows that tradition That the most learned and most holy Pope Gregory the Great was ignorant of the common sense of those more ancient holy Fathers, and of the whole primitive Church, no one would dare even to suspect except rashly, so that they are deservedly to be refuted and beaten back who, with the more recent assertors of the distinction, not without his ignominy, invent that he was the first and only one to intrude the unity of the women into written commentaries, and then into the ecclesiastical Offices; which how base it is, no one does not see; where namely Gregory so speaks, as of a matter before his age most well known, most certain, and most received, not by disputing or arguing, but by most simply setting forth the matter as undoubted. Thus he begins his homily 25 on the Gospels: "Mary Magdalene, who had been a sinner in the city, by loving the truth washed with tears the stains of her crime," etc. With these connect the beginning of homily 33: "As I think of the penitence of Mary Magdalene, I am more inclined to weep than to say anything… But we believe that she whom Luke names a sinful woman, John names Mary, is that Mary out of whom Mark testifies that seven demons were cast."

[58] and the later writers follow everywhere, These things are plain, nor do the adversaries doubt Gregory's mind, nor deny that after his times the opinion of confusing the controverted women into one alone altogether prevailed; and this is so certain that in all nine hundred years and more, up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, scarcely any one is to be found who, if he did not openly stand for the unity, certainly was not at the furthest remove, at least among the Latins, from distinguishing the three. For many let one suffice: Chrodobert, archbishop of Tours, a writer of the seventh century, in his notes to the works of St. Leo thus most expressly speaking: "Let there be commemorated that Evangelical sinful woman Mary Magdalene, out of whom the Lord cast seven demons… and she is the one who always followed the Lord even to the crucifixion and burial, and she first after the resurrection, before any of the Apostles, and before the most glorious mother of the Lord, Mary ever Virgin, deserved to see both the angels and the Lord: she is the sister of Martha and Lazarus, whom the Lord raised on the third day of his death." Run through the following centuries, there will occur Bede, in whom you will find Gregory speaking, Paschasius Radbertus, Christian Druthmar, Odo of Cluny, and very many others everywhere wont to be cited.

[59] I should certainly be tiresome and odious if I accumulated more texts amid so great a throng of writers, especially the adversaries freely confessing that, whom Trevet enumerates in a long order: after St. Gregory's times, almost all the Fathers and interpreters embraced the opinion of that great Pontiff together with the universal Church—at least that there existed absolutely none who thought of a distinction of three women. Nor indeed was it permitted with such impunity to detract from that most common consensus of the whole Church by Faber and Clichtove, but that their temerity was at once repressed by the most celebrated man John Fisher, bishop of Rochester in England, by Noël Bède in Gaul, by Balthasar Sorio in Spain, to whose arguments the Parisian theological faculty so subscribed that it judged that the decree related above must be published. Those who afterward keenly and expressly defended the received tradition are enumerated in a long series by Trevet, Calmet, and others.

[60] Let there be for us here, by way of a coronis, what on page 228 is adduced by Trevet from the illustrious man John Nicolai of the Order of Preachers, nor is the Sorbonne known to have receded from its former censure. an annotation on the recently cited text of St. Thomas, in these words: "Of the unnamed woman Luke says this, and there are not a few who think her other than Magdalene; but Gregory affirms her the same, and the Church follows Gregory's sense, when in her Office she speaks promiscuously of both, as of one. Hence the Parisian Faculty itself sanctioned that his sense must be embraced by all its members, against the little book of Faber Stapulensis, then recent, in the year 1521 by a public and solemn decree; and against the trifles of I know not what babblers, daring even to ascribe this to St. Thomas, in the year 1636, when I myself was present, it renewed the same decree." Away therefore with the dreams of those who trifle that the Sorbonne has today departed from a decree so solemnly passed and renewed.

§ VI. That one woman is more consonant to the Gospel from the correspondences.

Hitherto the contention has been from authority, which alone, although it suffices to break all the efforts of the adversaries, inasmuch as it is drawn from the very fonts of the Gospels from the Church's beginning and confirmed by perpetual tradition, Those correspondences and so needs no further demonstration; nevertheless out of abundance it pleases to buttress our opinion also with those considerations which not only refute those specious ratiocinations of the adversaries, but utterly enervate them, even so far that from the evangelical history itself it manifestly appears that with most just right the holy Fathers and interpreters related above judged that those things are wrongly divided into three different women which most aptly suit one and the same: not indeed with such clarity that the arguments are evident (otherwise the thing itself would now have to be believed by divine faith), but with such verisimilitude as abundantly to scatter all the engines of the adversaries. From the congruities or correspondences we first undertake to demonstrate this, in the following paragraph about to weigh the very texts from which the harmony and consonance of the Gospels may more shine forth.

[62] they can be drawn out from Luke's Gospel itself, From St. Luke's history itself, whence the chief difficulty arises, we shall take our beginning; for he alone is the one who spoke of Mary Magdalene, of Mary the sister of Martha, and of the sinful woman under three different names, so to speak; of whom the second is known also only in John; so that it must be said that she was unknown to Matthew and Mark, unless she be understood under the name of Magdalene. Let us follow St. Luke. He therefore, toward the end of the seventh chapter of his Gospel, commemorates the conversion of one of these three pretended women: then in chapter 8 he exhibits another (now free from seven demons) now diligently intent on the exercise of virtues and good works, that is, given to the active life, by assiduously following Christ, and ministering to Him of her substance. Finally in chapter 10 there comes forth another a little more perfect, all but raised to union and to contemplation. Do you here behold three, or one? Let prejudices be absent.

[63] who, if he had not named Magdalene, Confess candidly, if Luke had not named Mary Magdalene in chapter 8, if he had left also the sister of Martha anonymous, would not the suspicion presently fall that not three women there, but one, is designated? Could the Evangelist, by a more orderly arrangement, lead as it were by the hand the sinful woman possessed by seven demons, first freed from them, then penitent, then kindled with charity toward Christ, and having deserved pardon, gradually to more perfect things? There is certainly what may persuade that here the progress of a sinful soul, gradually ascending to God, is described. Again, if Luke had begun his discourse of Magdalene or of the sister of Martha before he had spoken of the sinful woman's conversion; if in the other Evangelists anything occurred which disturbed Luke's narration, I would not indeed deny that place must be given to the distinction.

[64] the sinful woman, the penitent, and the loving one would be freely confused: But indeed, unless I am vehemently mistaken, whoever, having read the conversion of the penitent sinful woman, shall resolve in his mind to combine in historical series all the deeds which both Luke himself and the other Evangelists relate concerning Magdalene and the sister of Martha, will understand not with difficulty that there is a sequence of the life of that sinful woman, who, the filth of her sins being expiated in the house of the Pharisee, so changed her morals for the better that through the whole remaining course of her life she most constantly exacted of herself what on that first day of conversion she had intrepidly begun, and whom therefore Christ Himself always pursued with singular love. Contemplate her continually following her liberator, indivisibly adhering to Him, and most faithfully ministering of her goods. Note her everywhere more fervent than the other women, so that among them she is named first. As Christ hastens to Jerusalem, she runs before, that she may receive the most beloved Master with lodging, presently beside His feet, that you might easily discern her accustomed love, she sits down to hear the word, the care of ministering being then left to her sister: which if rightly weighed, light arises even against one's will, whereby Luke's history is not a little illustrated.

[65] "Thus he himself speaks in chapter 10," say the adversaries, "as if he there plainly showed that he is treating of two sisters before unknown to Christ, nor can Mary be feigned unknown before namely long after the sinful woman had been cured, but Magdalene had followed the Lord Himself, traversing Galilee, now for a long time." Concerning the various modes of the Evangelists' speaking, and why they kept silent a few things, it would be inquired here in vain; we draw down the begun thread of the evangelical narration. Who, I beseech, would persuade himself that that Mary the sister of Martha was before unknown to Christ—nay, not rather familiar

—she who, when the guest had scarcely entered, sat down at His feet, and heard His word out of an already-contracted intimacy? Let the adversaries explain to us where and when so intimate an acquaintance arose; let them unroll the Gospels, that before that time which Luke there designates they may find any woman who had ever so great a union with the Savior. What therefore is more ready to think than that all those things coalesced, from the time when that penitent woman began to love Christ with so ardent a love—she to whom all those things most plainly agree which are recorded of Magdalene and Mary—so that here a mirror runs into the eyes utterly opposite to the Castellanian one? Let us follow Christ going from Bethany to Jerusalem:

[66] And let Mary herself have accompanied Him to the imminent festival, who deals so familiarly with Christ, whence, when the Lord, about to return for the next festival, had gone beyond the Jordan, there also about to preach the kingdom of God, she herself remained at Bethany, near enough that she might nowhere fail her Beloved, all whose limits of mission she knew. Meanwhile her brother Lazarus fell into sickness; which is the narration of the Evangelist John, most aptly to be connected with the former. Christ arrives, Lazarus being already dead, he is recalled to life, and there follow the proofs of that most singular love, which everywhere show the same woman attentive, acting, speaking, serving, anointing, let us say loving, by so many indications, that I candidly confess, all these circumstances being observed, I so much the more incline to the unity of the women, the more I formerly seemed to abhor it; for that connection of the deeds always presents itself, so that she cannot but be the same Mary at the feet, at the head, at the cross, weeping at the tomb, at the vision of the angels, flying to the feet of the appearing Spouse, wholly melting with love of the requiting Lord, as of her alone it was testified, "because she loved much."

[67] Let us paint these things in their own colors, and represent the characteristics everywhere conformable; the beginning being drawn again from the sinful woman, so that she cannot be another than Magdalene, for neither can the delineation of Magdalene, expressed by the very pencil of Christ, lack its shadows. Let us behold the sinful woman deformed by her crimes; these easily transfer to Magdalene the seven demons by which we know her to have been possessed, freed from those monsters both physical and moral by the most loving Savior Himself, so that where sin had superabounded, grace also might superabound. Behold Magdalene a sinful woman but also penitent, to whom many sins were forgiven, because she loved much: behold also the loving one, behold the grateful one toward her benefactor, for whom she abundantly provides of her substance, whom she most faithfully follows even to the passion and the cross, whom even dead she cannot desert, not suffering herself to be torn from the tomb until she should behold Him alive again, and prostrate herself anew at His feet.

[68] And here do we not recognize Mary the sister of Martha? It would certainly be a marvel if she could have portrayed herself better, unless you altogether deny that she was Christ's loving one; of whom alone, on account of her most vehement love toward Christ, we receive it said, "Now Jesus loved Mary"; namely by whom she was most tenderly loved. Who would suffer these things to be said of several women? Again, "she anointed my feet with ointment" is pronounced of the sinful woman; but did not also Mary the sister of Martha bring a pound of precious pistic nard which she poured over the head of Him reclining; and further did Magdalene buy spices, that coming she might anoint Christ? Everywhere the same violence of love, the same impulse of charity. The mutual love of the Savior toward Mary has already been shown, but also toward the sinful woman, whom He protects against the Pharisee, just as He protected Mary when she was accused by her sister, and the Apostles murmured; but no less did He favor Magdalene, when He, before the other women, before the Apostles, first consoled her with His glorious presence. If these are different women, at the least it will follow that Mary the Bethanian alone melted away at home in base idleness, while the other acquaintances, all of them, followed the Lord to the cross with so great solicitude, and, when He was lost, sought Him out.

[69] such as she is nevertheless everywhere depicted, You see, I think, to what these things could be extended if the characters, properties, and correspondences were weighed one by one; I repeat a single observation, already touched, which from the most well-known history of Lazarus may more confirm the identity of the women. Lazarus was sick, and at once the sisters sent to Christ, saying, "Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick." Whence can be feigned so great an intimacy and union between those sisters and the Lord, "Behold, he whom Thou lovest," when it is known from Luke alone that He turned aside once to that castle, from which He had now for a long time been absent? Whence was the place in which Christ tarried so well known to them? Yet they sent to Him: what is more obvious than to think that so familiar an acquaintance could have arisen from no other source than that Mary, the faithful attendant of Christ, had adhered to Him in Galilee, and had received Him with lodging? But why does she now not follow Christ? The response is at hand, that since the Lord was evangelizing beyond the Jordan, not so far from Bethany, she could conveniently minister to Him through messengers, such as she sent, that He might hasten His return on account of the dangerous sickness of her brother, whom for the sister's sake Jesus loved. Attend to the tender little suppliant note: "He whom Thou lovest is sick"; attend to the mutual friendship of Christ: "Lazarus our friend."

[70] she everywhere revealing herself the same. If St. Thomas rightly defined friendship, it is a love of mutual benevolence founded upon some communication; it is necessary therefore that a communication of this kind and connection intervened between that family and Christ, of which no vestiges are at hand, unless they be summoned from the familiarity which in Galilee the loving Magdalene had contracted with her Beloved, by constantly following Him and ministering to Him of her substance; so that here again you may perceive that Magdalene and Mary the Bethanian are not twin, but one single woman; whom you will also recognize as the sinful woman from the same source, if you behold her, after her manner, rushing to the feet of the Lord, when she understood that He was approaching Bethany. "Mary therefore, when she had come where Jesus was, seeing Him, fell at His feet, and said to Him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." Martha did not fall at the feet of Christ, Mary fell, who had grown accustomed to them, from the time when, having entered the house of the Pharisee, she had found salvation at His most holy feet, now in like manner about to obtain her brother's life from the Savior. Everywhere charity urges Mary, everywhere she affords proofs of most tender love; the same at banquets, the same in the inner chambers, the same at the sepulcher of her brother, the same at the tomb of the Lord, everywhere loving much, everywhere embracing His feet, everywhere such that from the collection of the characteristics the Church recognized her one and the same, and furthermore continues to recognize her, whatever the adversaries gainsay.

§ VII. The same consonance is shown by other arguments.

From what has been brought forward hitherto I think it is now plain that there is in the adversaries' opinion more of I know not what external splendor and plausibility than of solid truth; It is argued positively for the identity nor indeed are their reasons so specious that they are not most easily repelled, as to one attending to what has been said above I think is sufficiently clear. But positive arguments from the Gospel itself they everywhere think are wanting, by which the received opinion of the Church may be sufficiently established; inasmuch as the identity of the three women does not seem to be drawn out thence openly enough. We have already confessed and confess again, that the aforesaid identity is not so expressly stated as to be believed by divine faith; but nevertheless, if it does not flow thence with complete certitude, we certainly think it is deduced from the evangelical history with such verisimilitude that the adversaries have nothing which they can oppose with equal solidity; wont mostly to recur to escapes and evasions, that they may in some way forestall the most open text of John, and elude the words of him and of Matthew and Mark. Here again the Gauls, contending among themselves, published vast and sometimes gaping dissertations back and forth, which here to weigh or discuss would be a most tedious business. It has seemed better to us to contract the matter into a few things, but with what clarity we can, the chief escapes of the adversaries being again and again shut off.

[72] Behold the words of the Evangelist John, chapter 11: "Now there was a certain man sick, Lazarus of Bethany, of the castle of Mary and Martha his sister (Now Mary was she who anointed the Lord with ointment, from John chapter 11, "Now Mary was she," etc. and wiped His feet with her hair; whose brother Lazarus was sick.)" From these words Augustine, praised above at number 52, did not doubt, nor did the other Fathers doubt, that the Evangelist openly hinted that Mary was that woman who in Naim (as Luke narrates in chapter 7) had anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, since no other woman is known in the Gospels who did this before Lazarus was sick in Bethany; but Mary had already done this, says Augustine most expressly. Let it be permitted to use the dialectical form: No woman anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair before Lazarus was sick except the sinful woman alone; therefore Mary the sister of Lazarus is herself the sinful woman. The consequence is proved: we know that the one and only anointing of the Lord was done by the sinful woman in Naim; but that anointing Mary the sister of Lazarus did; therefore Mary the sister of Lazarus is herself the sinful woman. Let whoever is free from party zeal read and weigh these things, and I am vehemently mistaken unless in the obvious sense of the words, which freely runs into the eyes, he continually assents that there is described there by Luke and John one and the same woman.

[73] Marvel at the subtle evasion of the adversaries. "John there does not speak of the woman recorded by Luke," they say, nor does the place lie open to escape, "but using an anticipation or prolepsis, he insinuates that anointing which afterward, as John himself narrates in chapter 12, was done at Bethany in the house of Simon the Leper, and so the sister of Lazarus is here wrongly confused with the sinful woman." What? That there is at hand an example of like anticipation, that in Matthew, enumerating the Apostles in chapter 10, Judas Iscariot is named among the others with the addition "who also betrayed Him"; when nevertheless that betrayal or perfidy was perpetrated long after. Thus they presume to remove from themselves the force of the argument, but by a vain effort: for, to say it most mildly, this is a pure and specious escape, by no means to be thrust forward by one who has unrolled John's Gospel a little more studiously; with whom, as far as I know, it is not usual in the series of his history to substitute the past tense for the future, as he, treating of the same Judas in chapter 6, did not say, "who betrayed," but "for this man was going to betray Him": but where he treats of Nicodemus and of himself, after the deed done, he expressly uses the past tense, "who had come to Him by night," John 7 and 19: but in the last chapter, "who reclined at supper upon the breast of Jesus," so that he always accurately draws down the thread of the narration, the differences of the times being observed, although he wrote fifty years after the things were done.

[74] while Mary is there so distinctly described, But that anyone may more manifestly perceive this, and that the not great subtlety of this trite quibble may lie open; what, I beseech, by any preoccupation whatsoever

was it necessary for John, that in chapter 11 he should forecast the deed of the woman which he was about to describe entire in the chapter immediately following? Again, what need was there of that parenthesis, unless he had wished to teach something, whereby that woman might be distinguished and depicted by a certain peculiar and, as it were, characteristic mark? Namely her, to whom alone he intended to assert a singular prerogative, that it had been given to her before all other women whatsoever to anoint Christ the Savior; which is nowhere handed down of any other woman at all, neither in sacred nor perhaps in profane history. This Luke the Evangelist (with whom alone that one anointing is known) had omitted to indicate; John supplies it, as is most certain to have been done by him in many other places. And we altogether judge this to have been the true cause of inserting the parenthesis: so that one may boldly pronounce it a mere evasion, that John in the passage already named should have named Mary, who anointed the feet of the Lord, rather from the anointing afterward to be done than from the anointing done before. I pass over other exceptions of that kind—I would call them tricks and quibbles—which I forbear to relate, much less to refute.

[75] that as the anointer of Christ she would otherwise be unknown, Another instance of theirs is, that the Evangelists do not report or recite one another's matters, nor do they seem wont to allude to those things which have been narrated by others; whence they think it follows that John made no mention of the woman recorded by Luke, but only of that woman alone concerning whom the discourse was in the cited passage. Fair words, I pray: does not Luke the Evangelist sufficiently show that he knew the things which were handed down by Matthew and Mark, and yet subjoins others omitted by them? And did not John supply many other things which were wanting among the others, or were not clearly enough described? Not to wander further from the argument: who today would know who that woman was in Matthew 26 and Mark 14, who in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper anointed the Lord with ointment, of whom nevertheless the Lord there so expressly asserts, "Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she hath done shall be told for a memorial of her"—who, I say, would know that woman, or in what manner the Savior's own prophecy would hold good, unless John had designated her by name? Who would ever have known the sinful woman (in Luke also anonymous), unless, bathed in the light of John, she were called Mary? And whose memory, finally, according to Christ's prediction, does the Church celebrate except only of Mary, who to John is manifestly the sinful woman, and to him also and to others Magdalene?

[76] Magdalene, I say, nay rather Mary Magdalene, nor could it be verified, in whom, that she is to be confounded with the sinful woman, the Fathers and interpreters everywhere seem not to have labored much, some of whom we have recited above, and whom, from the possession of seven demons, deformed before by many sins, they not grudgingly acknowledged, and today the whole Church acknowledges together with them. It is asked whether this too may be drawn from elsewhere as clearly as it was just now shown from John, that Mary the Bethanian was the same who also in Naim had anointed the Lord with ointment. This indeed we contend is proved not obscurely, from the words of Matthew, Mark, and John, which they narrate to have been pronounced by Christ at the supper made in the house of Simon the Leper, while the Apostles, or at least Judas Iscariot, murmured that the precious ointment was thus poured out by Mary, which could have been sold for three hundred pence, and that price given to the poor: which inconsiderate detraction Christ Himself at once rebuked, wondrously commending the woman's pious office toward Himself, with the addition indeed of that most singular prophecy just related, that wheresoever the Gospel should be preached, there also should be told what she had done, and the memory of that deed should be perpetually preserved; which truly has not been preserved otherwise than in that very sense which the common opinion of the Church receives, holds, preserves, and defends.

[77] Hither therefore look the things which Matthew says in chapter 26; Christ's prophecy concerning her. "She in pouring this ointment upon my body, did it to bury me"; which by the obvious and genuine sense you will so interpret, that Christ there openly hinted that the woman had conferred upon Him while yet living what not long after she would attempt to confer upon Him dead, and that this would not come to pass, He alone had foreknown. And this Mark insinuates a little more clearly in chapter 14: "What she had, she hath done; she is come beforehand to anoint my body to the burying"; she did now, forsooth, what afterward that same woman would in vain attempt, inasmuch as I am about to forestall her by my resurrection. Nor do the words of John in chapter 12 disagree: "Suffer her, that she may keep it against the day of my burying"; as if He should say, suffer her now to anoint my body, since in my burial it will not be entire for her to do so. Let us not wrangle: tell me, I pray, why in those passages mention is so concordantly made of the burial, if Christ did not wish to presignify that that same woman would be solicitous for His sepulchral anointing? I am not ignorant that the words of the Evangelists already related are in many ways twisted and expounded; but that we may not here be forced to linger in handling various tricks, this one thing I demand, that they be taken nakedly and in the most obvious sense, and that all the circumstances be considered, especially of the sacred love wherewith she was borne toward the Savior, and further, after His death, wherewith Mary, most beloved of Christ, straightway boiled over—Mary, to be most certainly transformed into Magdalene, whether the adversaries will or no.

[78] There is described a woman most devoted to Christ, and, Finally, from the sole description of the woman, if it may be so said, His attendant; a woman long accustomed to Christ; a woman about to desert the beloved Savior neither in life, nor in death, nor in the sepulcher: "she did it to bury me," "she is come beforehand to anoint my body to the burying," "against the day of my burying"; either my eyes see but little, or I behold there designated a woman who is not to be torn from the tomb of the Lord, and who therefore strives by every means to find and anoint His body: in which, since Christ knew she would be hindered, He then wished to grant that she should forestall by anointing the body for burial: which, since the murmuring disciples also were ignorant of it, He rightly reproved them, that they wished to forbid the woman from working a good work upon Him. Turn these things and turn them again, roll and unroll them; even unwilling you will be compelled to acknowledge here the same woman both forestalling the burial, and intending to attend to the burial with every effort: but she who intends to attend to the burial is Magdalene herself; therefore we shall confess that she who forestalls is Magdalene also; and, what is the last consequence of all, that the opinion of the Church, which confounds the sinful woman, Mary the sister of Lazarus, and Magdalene into one, single, and the same woman, is more consonant with the Gospel.

[79] Mary is most certainly confounded with Magdalene, Let us behold at last the most ardent lover of Christ standing beside His cross; either this is Mary the Bethanian, or she does not deserve to be called a lover; nor does it suit her that she chose the best part, nor did Christ so rightly place His love; but "Jesus loved Mary." Would she, so tenderly loving the Lord in return, while the other women vied in attending, alone desert Him upon the cross? I shall not be induced to believe it. Would she who had twice anointed the living Christ forget Him dying or buried? Nay rather she hastens to the sepulcher early while it was yet dark; and finding the tomb empty, she runs plaintive to Peter: "They have taken away my Lord, and we know not where they have laid Him." She returns, she persists standing without at the tomb weeping; she looks in, she sees angels, she is not appeased; but kindled by the fire of love she goes on to seek her Lord, whence it came to pass that she alone then saw Him, who had remained to seek Him: the Lord addresses His lover, "Mary"; she at once recognizes her beloved by His voice, whom by His face she had not yet recognized: and shall we deny that this is the sister of Lazarus, illustrious in so singular a friendship of the Savior, that nowhere do we know a woman called by Christ by her proper name, except her and her sister Martha? It is Mary her very self, doubt not: but it is also Magdalene, John the Evangelist again bearing witness: "Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples: Because I have seen the Lord, and He hath spoken these things unto me"; she is also the sinful woman; which was to be demonstrated.

[80] who alone is so preached throughout the whole Church. These things the praised Bishop of Rochester deduces more fully and evinces by many arguments in his suppositions 5, 7, and 10, nay in his whole Confutation of Faber: nor less does Noel Beda urge the same in his Declaration of the Church's opinion, folio 30; but that we may not exceed the limits of brevity we have set ourselves, here alone will suffice the conclusion of Baronius, rightly deduced from the premises: "Certainly indeed," says he, "even if no other reason underlay, whereby this same woman, both the sinful woman and the same Mary the sister of Lazarus, surnamed Magdalene, could be said to be one; nevertheless, that Jesus may be justified in His words, lest He be accused of a false prophecy (which is impious to say), it is necessary to affirm that Magdalene is one and the same, not diverse or several, since the Church, spread far and wide throughout the world, preaches only one Magdalene."

§ VIII. The differing opinion of the Greeks.

The opinion of the Greek Fathers not uniform, I call it differing, not only on this head, that it by no means consents to the tradition of the Latin Church, but that the Greeks themselves disagree among themselves, as may be seen in one series in tome 7 of the Library of Preaching Fathers in Combefis, who collects very many things from those Greeks under the title of the feast of Blessed Mary Magdalene, where nevertheless here and there in the added little notes he seems to favor the distinction of the women rather than the unity. There is reported there Amphilochius, confounding the anointing of Mary, at which Judas murmured, with the anointing of the Evangelist Luke, but where you would desire clarity. St. Ephrem the Syrian, in the same author, page 359, acknowledges with the Latins one sole woman who anointed the Savior twice. But on the contrary Chrysostom, page 367, will have it that she is another woman who in Matthew and Mark poured the ointment upon His head, than she who according to Luke touched His extreme feet: where you abundantly perceive what I said above, that the question which is before us is not there agitated, but that there is disputed only about the number of the anointings and the anointers, in which how diversely the Greek Fathers think you will more manifestly discover in the praised Combefis.

[82] St. Chrysostom's own opinion is more expressly reported on page 372 from his homily 81 on Matthew, which we mentioned above, in these words: to others two anointers, "This woman seems to be one and the same in all the Evangelists; yet she is not: but in three she seems to me to be one and the same: in John, however, not so, but there is a certain other admirable woman, namely the sister of Lazarus." No injury is done to Chrysostom, if he too, just as we said of St. Jerome and others, be asserted to have thought variously concerning the anointing women, so that from those Greek Fathers no uniformity can be had, the moderns wasting oil and labor who by a most vain effort exult that they have dug out from them some certain tradition for the first six centuries. Hear also Titus of Bostra in the same place, page 376, where, speaking of the sinful woman, whether he himself, or another under

his name, thus expressly pronounces: "This woman is neither she of whom mention is made in Matthew, nor again she of whom in Mark, nor finally she of whom in John": whence it follows that there were at the least three anointing women, which no one today would admit, inasmuch as it is foreign to Augustine and the Latins everywhere, and to the more common sense of the universal Church.

[83] Yet this same is the more common opinion of Theophylact and of other more recent Greeks, which is reported in these words on page 391: others asserting three, "But many ask how many women there were who anointed the Lord with ointment. And some indeed say that there were two, one namely in John, who was the sister of Lazarus, and another in Matthew and Mark, and now in Luke. But I believe those who say there were three: one indeed in John six days before the Pasch, who was also the sister of Lazarus: another in Matthew and Mark two days before the Pasch; and that third of whom Luke now speaks, who in the midst of the Gospel preaching anointed the Lord." And this opinion falls back at last upon that to which Origen had once led it, discoursing more fully in tract 35 on Matthew, and mixing false things with true, from which it will be enough to have plucked a few. "Who then will say," says he, "that there were four women of whom the Evangelists wrote: but I rather agree that there were three: and one indeed of whom Matthew and Mark wrote… another of whom Luke wrote, and another of whom John wrote."

[84] and two suppers and as many anointings in Bethany. Origen adduces more things in that place which would need to be examined by a longer discussion; but since this has already been done so often by the expositors, and most recently and accurately by the above-praised Trevet from page 197, by whom also the things which are circulated under the name of Theophilus of Antioch, and those which Modestus of Jerusalem is said in Photius to have thought, have been abundantly refuted; let it here suffice to have set forth in few words the sentiments of most of the Greeks, from which how far one must recede, I judge most plain from what has been disputed above. The supposition of the fact is erroneous, that for one Bethanian supper they bring in two, and would even have it that she was another woman who in Matthew and Mark performed the office of anointing, and another again of whom John makes mention; whereas nevertheless, by the most received and concordant opinion of our doctors, and indeed even of the adversaries, only a single supper was exhibited to Christ in the house of Simon the Leper; only a single anointing was performed, at which the disciples equally in Matthew and Mark, and in John, murmured, the Lord wondrously vindicating the woman's pious office—which is the same discourse in the three Evangelists, whatever some perhaps with Baronius may have thought could be maintained, that there were two suppers in Bethany.

[85] Hence in the Menaea diverse persons, The distinction of the women being admitted among the Greeks, it is no wonder if in their subsequent Menaea, Menology, Synaxaria, and their other ritual books distinct festivities occur, which forsooth would be reckoned proper to each. Thus Mary the sister of Lazarus is by their own choice inscribed in the Menaea on the 18th of March, as you will find noted in its place in our Acts; perhaps because they thought the Bethanian anointing was done about that day. There is reported likewise, and set down, on the 21st day of the same month, the woman a sinner in the city, who anointed the feet of the Lord in the house of Simon the Leper; I suppose they meant to say the Pharisee, unless these Simons are confounded, and it be, as some one has thought, that Simon of two names, or that he migrated from Naim into Bethany. Something must be allowed to the Greek calendars, whose opinion is nowhere concordant, nowhere accurate enough in the circumstances of that whole narration, and whose announcements and eulogies to have recited will be to have refuted; since concerning the sanctity or cult of that sinful woman, if she be not confounded with another, nothing sufficiently certain has been handed down in either the evangelical or the ecclesiastical history.

[86] but Magdalene chief among them; Concerning St. Mary Magdalene on this day the Greek and all the Eastern calendars, by whatever name they are called, treat emulously; for besides the Menology and the printed Menaea, mention is made of her by Maximus bishop of Cythera, the Typicon of Sabas, the particular Menaea, the Anthologium, the Horologium, the Kalendar of Genebrard, the Ruthenian, Syriac, Chaldaic, Ethiopic, and others, in which for the most part she is adorned with the common eulogy received from the Greeks, τῆς ἁγίας μυροφόρου καὶ ἰσαποστόλου Μαρίας τῆς Μαγδαληνῆς. That is: "of the holy ointment-bearer and equal-to-the-apostles Mary the Magdalene"; than which no more illustrious encomium could be ascribed to the Saint, so that to transcribe hither all the other things of less moment, and sometimes fabulous matters mixed in, plainly seemed superfluous. In tome 1 of April, page 811, where St. Mary of Cleophas is treated, there are reported the little verses which are sung to the Evangelical matrons who came on the Lord's-day morning to anoint Jesus, among whom there is no doubt that St. Mary Magdalene is to be counted; whence the three Marys commonly most known, such as of old were wont to be venerated in the church of Maurienne, you have in the Acts, tome 1 of May, page 169. But here the discourse must be pursued concerning ours alone.

[87] but thence little help for the adversaries, Of what age those Greek monuments already adduced for the Saint's cult savor, I do not inquire at length; it is manifest enough that they ought to be reckoned more recent, even from this head alone, that concerning the aforetouched translation of the sacred body they mingle various things which are most certainly later than the ninth century, nay seem to savor of those centuries in which it began to be disputed, both between the Latins and Greeks, and even among the Latins themselves, as must be discussed more fully below. Let our more recent critics, the assertors of the distinction, observe meanwhile, I beseech, that very little help from all ancient Greece has hitherto accrued to them for the present controversy: certainly nothing whereby the most ancient tradition of the whole Catholic Church is even in the least shaken. We even add, of our own accord, a sufficiently common eulogy of the Menaea, wholly similar to that which we reported from the Synaxarium of Basil Porphyrogenitus in tome 1 of the month of July. It is not worth while to describe the same thing twice: thus Rader rendered the whole matter into Latin.

[88] "Of the holy anointer and equal to the Apostles Mary Magdalene. She, after she came to Christ, nor from the eulogy never afterward departed from Him, having followed Him even unto death; by whose grace she was freed from the seven demons by which she had been possessed: and she was His ointment-bearer, and first of all, with the other Mary, namely the most holy Mother of God, saw Him rising from the dead, when on the evening of the Sabbath she saw an angel, and in the morning two angels sitting in white, and again the Lord Himself; whom she thought to be the gardener, when she heard, 'Touch me not.' After therefore the divine and holy ascension of Christ into heaven, she came to Ephesus to St. John the Theologian and Apostle, and there holily fell asleep, and was buried at the entrance of the cave in which afterward the Seven Sleepers reposed. Then, Leo our emperor being laid to rest by a blessed end, the body of Magdalene was carried to Constantinople, and deposited in the monastery of St. Lazarus, built by him, in which every year her memory is celebrated. And besides in the shrine of the Curator near the Taurus."

[89] The former part of this eulogy, though not altogether accurately arranged, anyone will easily admit; but the things said in the latter part I judge to be wholly false. for the greater part not to be admitted. What does the encomiast mean, when he says that after the ascension of Christ into heaven she came to Ephesus to St. John? Had John perchance gone before her thither before the ascension? That our holy Mary Magdalene was at Ephesus, at least that she there fell asleep in the Lord, is altogether to be denied, nor will this ever be sufficiently proved by the Greeks. The history, fabricated in later centuries, we shall examine below, and the other things pertaining to the much-sung translation. But whether the monastery of St. Lazarus was built by Leo or by Basil (concerning which see the Christian Constantinople of Du Cange), it can by no means be admitted that the bodies of St. Lazarus of Bethany, or of the true Mary Magdalene herself, were translated thither, which will be the subject of another disquisition. Certainly from that eulogy it seems to be plain that these are studied fictions of the Greeks, by which they strove to overturn the most received tradition of the Latins. Let us now weigh our Martyrologies, thence about to proceed to the controverted translations.

§ IX. The Saint's cult in the Latin calendars.

By these I here understand the Sacramentaries, the ancient Kalendars, and the Martyrologies, from which the antiquity and sincerity of the cult must altogether be determined: Here, if anywhere they went astray, and these I undertake here chiefly to weigh, because I long ago observed that various Martyrologies are cited back and forth and heaped up, and very many things are involved, which, if they had been rightly explained, it would be almost evident that most of all those things wont to be emulously alleged can neither profit nor harm any part of the contenders. These therefore we adduce not that the cult of St. Mary Magdalene, most widely propagated throughout the whole Church, may be proved, but for this cause alone, that it may manifestly appear, from these sacred monuments, that they have hitherto wrongly wrangled for the distinction of the holy women, who, struggling against the common sense of the Church, have fought blindly with weapons unknown to themselves after the manner of the Andabatae, under the lead of Launoy, who scraped together many things indiscriminately from Martyrologies of every kind, about whose age, worth, or merit—to be exhibited first—he was not greatly solicitous, which in these matters ought to have been his first care.

[91] ignorant of our calendars, He therefore, in his dissertation on the fictitious landing of Lazarus, Maximin, etc., in Provence, multiplies Martyrologies, and adduces some confused ones from the Greeks, which certainly pertain hither by no means. Let an example be the women Martha and Mary placed on the 4th of June in the Menology which from the version we call Sirletus's, as if there had been nowhere any Marthas or Marys besides the two most well-known Bethanian sisters. But Launoy erred by a whole heaven, whom very many, an equally blind guide, followed equally blindly, since those two women, passed over in our Acts on that day, are celebrated with three others in the Menaea and elsewhere on the 6th day of the same month of June, not without other confusion, as you will find explained in the cited place. Thus in vain does Launoy describe Bede, Rabanus, Ado, Usuard, Notker, whose Martyrologies' age, series, and genesis, had he known, he would altogether have spared many pages of his dissertation, badly to be blackened. You have all these things explained more fully in the preface to Usuard before tome 6 of June, which are not now to be repeated here.

[92] not sufficiently observing the blunder of the Hieronymian codices, There is one, and that the sole, difficulty here to be explained a little more fully, which neither Launoy saw, nor any of those who have hitherto summoned aids from the Martyrologies to settle the present controversy. This is sought from the Hieronymian codices, in almost all of which, either on the 13th or 14th of the Kalends of February, that is, the 19th or 20th of January, it is read nearly thus: "Jerusalem, of Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus," or "At Jerusalem the nativity of SS. Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus," or by some other similar announcement, which wonderfully exercised Florentinius and others, Menard

adding some weight in his notes and Observations to the book of Sacraments of Pope Gregory, the first of that name surnamed the Great, as he himself indeed thought; but wrongly, since that Sacramentary, such as it is, is much fuller than the Gregorian one itself, nor can it in any way be recalled to his times, being at the least by two, and perhaps by three, centuries later.

[93] which Menard by a signal solecism Nor indeed in that whole Sacramentary is any memory of Mary, Martha, or Magdalene found, but it pleased Menard to insert there things he had read elsewhere, and which, in my judgment at least, he did not explain aptly enough. He says therefore that he found in some codex of Rodradus, on the fourteenth of the Kalends of February, "Of Mary and Martha": in the Rheims codex, "The birthday of holy Mary and Martha": in the codex of Ratold, "The birthday of the holy ones Mary and Martha"; where, he says, the word "Sanctorum" (of the holy) is taken substantively in the plural, and often occurs in our manuscripts and in the Roman Missal. In our cited codices there stand similar prayers concerning the same saints in this manner: "Hear, O Lord, Thy people, when we celebrate the festivity of Thy saints," etc. Thus in the Super Oblata it is held: "that they may also be pleasing to Thee for the festivity of Thy saints." And at the Postcommunion again: "Placated, O Lord, by the intercession of Thy saints." And these, if it please the powers above, and other things of that kind, Menard will have referred to the two holy sisters Mary and Martha, no example anywhere being adduced to make credible that "Sanctorum" can be joined, or at least was anywhere joined, with two women, that is, with two substantives of the feminine gender.

[94] Away with escapes, not to be fetched from so far: that word "Sanctorum" must be referred not to the ill-intruded sisters Mary and Martha, but to several male martyrs and one woman, he did not explain, but rather involved, who on that day in the more ancient Sacramentaries were joined together—which, described by unskilled copyists, were in many ways disfigured, and formed at the mere pleasure of the use of the churches for which they were transcribed; another would say deformed, vitiated, and distorted. Let Menard himself be heard, in the same place adducing the manuscript Martyrology of the Corbie library, where he read, "At Jerusalem, of Martha and Mary." "The rest," he says, "were carved by someone, as it is fair to believe, a trifler, but in some way it appears to have been written 'the sisters of Lazarus.'" Would that of that kind of triflers there had been a smaller number! who, reading in the Sacramentaries or other sacred Roman calendars saints unknown to them, substituted others akin and more known to themselves, as presently I shall make you understand a little more clearly; when I shall have appended the notes of the Roman rite, which the most learned Fronto, elsewhere often and deservedly praised by us, distinctly and rightly expressed in his select Observations on the Roman Kalendar.

[95] He asks first whether his Kalendar is Roman? The Sacramentaries and ancient Kalendars, And he answers in this manner: "He who reads this Kalendar will not hesitate to call it Roman, because many things are read in it which suit Rome alone. Then the Roman stations are designated: but there were some at Rome, others at Paris, others in other cities, as below we show. Finally, however many saints are inscribed, either they suffered at Rome, or they have a church at Rome. And altogether well: for before the solemnity of some saint was held, he ought to have there, where he was venerated, a sacred place, or oratory, or basilica, or cemetery. For a solemnity is not held except by a concourse of the people, nor does the people concur except into a place devoted to the saint who is venerated. Hence formerly each province had its own saints, whom they venerated; so that not even St. Peter was venerated everywhere with a public festivity, unless he had his own basilica… nor is it enough that there be a monastery there consecrated to a saint, because to monasteries there was no concourse of the people, as we often read in the epistles of Gregory the Great. Nor was it until after Gregory III that the saints began to be invoked in those places where they had not their own sacred temples." And this is the true epoch of that little Roman Martyrology, which, augmented by others, rendered even the Oriental saints familiar to the West, and propagated at least some cult to all the churches.

[96] There were therefore before those times saints restricted in some way to certain places, they regarded not the use of the universal Church, but particular places; who must be reckoned to have gradually passed from the Sacramentaries to the more universal Martyrologies. But this was done most ill by some copyists, whether by their own or others' authority, so that they foully corrupted either the Sacramentaries themselves, or at least the Martyrologies, not only by adding other proper saints, which is not so much to be blamed, but by substituting other saints more known to themselves for others. Let us say boldly, that any Roman Sacramentaries whatever are depraved in which other saints are added, besides those alone who at Rome had their festivities in that manner in which the cited Fronto described them: so that plainly in vain are Mary, Martha, or Magdalene to be sought at Rome before that time in which we said the little Roman Martyrology was collected at Rome, augmented chiefly from the history of Rufinus, whence also, from Florus mixed with Bede, we long ago demonstrated that Ado, Usuard, Notker, and almost the rest of the progeny of Martyrologies had their origin.

[97] nor were the saints made common before the little Roman one. In the aforesaid little Roman one there is no memory at all of Mary or Martha in January, nor indeed did any exist in the published Sacramentaries or in the Kalendar of Fronto; nor indeed could it exist in that promiscuous collection of martyrs which St. Gregory describes in his Register: "We have the names of almost all the MARTYRS, with their passions distinguished through the several days, collected in one codex, and on the daily days we perform the solemnities of Masses in their veneration"; by which words we judged elsewhere that the most ancient Hieronymian Martyrology is indicated; and from which at least commemorations of the holy MARTYRS, of whom alone at first it consisted, could be made merely by name, as almost now the Martyrology is wont to be recited in the choir: but thence far off were Mary or Martha, whom no one of the Latins at least, that I know, ever dreamed to be martyrs, much less asserted; so that even thence it may most manifestly be gathered that that announcement is adventitious and corrupt which now stands in the Hieronymian codices, neither truly, nor in its place; so that they forge altogether feeble weapons thence, who for the distinction of the women rashly quibble from sources unknown to themselves.

[98] The true festivity noted in the ancient Sacramentaries is explained, I dispatch the matter in a few words. Among the learned it is today ascertained that the most ancient are those codices of the Sacraments which Thomasius published, afterward Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, and which seem altogether fuller than the Gelasian: but in them Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus will be sought in vain; for there both rightly and genuinely it is read on the thirteenth of the Kalends of February, plainly in this manner: "On the birthday of the holy martyrs Sebastian, Marius (for Mary), Martha, Audifax, and Abacuc, or Abacum," to whom this prayer is fitted: "Grant, we beseech, almighty God, that we may partake both in the victories and in the rewards of Thy holy martyrs whose triumphs we celebrate": where "of the holy" is not taken substantively, as Menard wished, but truly coheres with its chief noun, as grammar-schoolboys know it ought to be construed. The first trifler most unskillfully extracted thence Mary and Martha; another probably added the location "At Jerusalem," and, if you will, the same or a third did not hesitate to distinguish "the sisters of Lazarus," with whom those martyrs celebrated at Rome have no greater affinity than with the Scythians or Arabs.

[99] in which neither Mary, nor Martha, nor Magdalene were known, Hence therefore, unless I am vehemently mistaken, you most clearly perceive the polluted fount of the Hieronymian codices, and of others, as of Rabanus and Notker, who received their material from them, from which so many empty word-battles have hitherto flowed. To say nothing that the trifler would not have written "of Mary and Martha," if he had had any heart or brain, but "of Martha and Mary," as everywhere happens, when those two sisters, the younger with the elder, are joined. Let this be certain to us, that the first author to make mention of Mary Magdalene, Martha, or Lazarus was the author of the little Roman one, and who with Florus (whom our Elders called Bede) placed our Saint on this twenty-second of July, whence her festivity was gradually propagated through the universal Church, and persevered even to our times; not to be changed, I think, on account of the too precipitate variation of three or four Gallican dioceses. Martha the same little Roman one announces by a word on the seventeenth of October, which Ado also did: to Usuard another celebration was more pleasing, by which she is joined on the seventeenth of December with her brother Lazarus, with a eulogy added from Ado, which from the same he neglected to take for Mary Magdalene, but in today's Roman it has been restored, some part of which Wandelbert bound up in his verses.

[100] At what time chiefly St. Martha was drawn back from the seventeenth of December to the twenty-ninth of July, it is not of this place to inquire: long after admitted in the West. so that it must be admitted as undoubted that no Mary the Bethanian, sister of Martha and Lazarus, in the present Latin calendars, much less the sinful woman apart from St. Mary Magdalene, is venerated; so that it is most open that in this all our Martyrologies agree, and so confirm the most received opinion of the Catholic Church concerning the one Evangelical woman, which from the faulty reading of the Hieronymian codices those more recent defenders of the distinction have in vain tried to batter, whom we do not despair of being there reduced to former and sounder counsels. From collecting eulogies we had here to abstain, because they are everywhere obvious in our Usuard and in others, and indeed at the end of this commentary we are about to treat of the eulogy of St. Mary Magdalene, of her miracles, temples, and most celebrated solemnity everywhere. A brief encomium Rader composed, which can here meanwhile supply the place of all the rest. Behold it:

[101] I know not whether any woman of the lot of women, after the august Mother of God and eternal Virgin, A brief eulogy of Mary Magdalene. has been celebrated with so great heraldries of praises (which Christ had foretold would come to pass) by the memory of almost all times since Christ was born. For by all the founders of the sacred and evangelical history, and by their interpreters, she is praised and proclaimed in rivalry. She had against her accusers a defender, and as her Best and Greatest patron and champion, and at once her praiser, Christ God. The glory, the name, the fame, and the praise of Magdalene has been propagated not only through the whole world, but even through the eternities of all times, as Christ Himself had foretold would come to pass. There stand besides encomia of her among the Fathers, etc. There remains another knot of this most intricate question, no less difficult, on which must be disputed concerning the place of the Saint's death, her translation, and relics; where I desire that I too be pardoned, if I do not summon hither the immense masses of papers with which a huge volume could be filled, content to run through the chief heads of the matters with what verisimilitude shall be permitted.

§ X. The Saint's death, burial, and translation, wrongly handed down by the Greeks.

We enter a new sea, agitated by contrary waves, with tempests and almost shipwrecks

equally foul and infamous as before, where again all is most turbid, entangled, and obscure, while there is contention, and that keenly, about a matter Launoy hostile to the people of Marseilles which through almost all the first six centuries of the Church no writer is known to have touched, so that we must proceed through most unknown vestiges—you would say through dense darkness—no one bearing before us a torch or a light which you could safely enough follow: by a chance again plainly marvelous, that, as illustrious was the glory of St. Mary Magdalene from the sacred Gospels themselves, as we just said, so doubtful are the remaining deeds of her life, her sojourn, death, burial—at least those which can be drawn from approved monuments: the Greeks on one side, the Latins on the other, especially the people of Marseilles, handing down opposite and conflicting things. Add that not even the Latins themselves sufficiently agree among themselves, while some think favor must be shown to the people of Saint-Maximin, litigating over the possession of the sacred body: but these disagree in the history of their translation; while some contend that the relics were brought to Vézelay from Jerusalem or from Bethany, others from Provence itself. Nay, that even at Rome sacred remains are said to be kept, so that here again you may perceive all to be perplexed, and liable to most grave difficulties.

[103] Greek weapons, but obsolete That an exit from this other tumultuous sea, or, if you prefer, labyrinth, may lie open, the disputation must be so ordered that we first remove those things which must be reckoned false, or at least less probable, such as is the already-mentioned above opinion of the Greeks, that St. Mary Magdalene, having followed St. John to Ephesus, there closed her last day, and there was buried, until in the ninth century, translated thence to Constantinople, she was placed with St. Lazarus her brother: all which John Launoy avidly seized, that he might in any way subvert the tradition of the Provençals, not mindful enough that he was fighting with obscure and rusty, so to speak, weapons, inasmuch as carried away by the mere ardor of conquering, and not sufficiently adhering to principles laid down elsewhere, which in the preface of his little work he had, with prudent and sensible counsel, thus established: "Of Maximinus (namely the companion of St. Magdalene) I shall say nothing, because I have found nothing done by the ancient and best authors who wrote before the year of Christ six hundred. But in a matter so very remote, to be wise without the commentaries of the ancients, is not the part of a wise historian, nor of a Christian writer, who above other mortals ought to abhor a lie."

[104] and he seized things contrary to his own historical principles; These things Launoy wisely, but from which he himself first deviated, who, when he found nothing done concerning the Ephesian burial of St. Magdalene before about the year six hundred, was himself neither wise, nor fulfilled the part of a wise historian; he must here be heard by us and refuted, all his arguments being sincerely represented. Behold therefore with what chiefly the hypercritic contends, in the edition of the year 1660, from page 226, the beginning being taken from Modestus of Jerusalem, whom in Photius, codex 275, he introduces speaking first in Greek, then in Latin, thus: "Deservedly therefore did the Savior choose Magdalene, out of whom the Lord cast seven demons, that through her He might expel the prince of sin from men. The histories hand down that Magdalene, out of whom the Lord cast seven demons, was this virgin, and her martyrdom is commemorated, when it is said that on account of her supreme virginity and purity she appeared to the torturers like pure glass. After the falling-asleep of our most holy Lady the Mother of God, she set out to Ephesus to the beloved disciple, where the myrrh-bearing Mary finished her apostolic course by martyrdom, unwilling to the very last breath to be separated from John the Evangelist and virgin."

[105] This alone, whole and sole, is the base on which the Launoyan edifice rests, finding nothing in all six centuries and which from him the adversaries in rivalry borrow, that they may distinguish that virgin Magdalene from the sinful woman, the authority being fetched from a single Greek writer of the seventh century (in which it is certain Modestus flourished), and than whom they produce no more ancient Greek, where they do not fear to reject St. Gregory the Great, who faithfully followed the tradition of six centuries. And who, I beseech, makes it credible that these are truly to be attributed to Modestus? Photius namely, the author of the Greek schism, branded with many marks, adducing only the fragment which he thought most probably must be opposed to the Latins. But even if we should grant that these were written by Modestus, what support would accrue thence to Launoy, who found nothing said of that whole matter before the year of Christ six hundred, all the Greeks being silent before Modestus through six whole centuries? Will he here say with Tertullian that the highest antiquity vindicates the first authority to that instrument? Did he here rather than in Provence find any tradition confirmed through all six centuries? Let him be brought back to the rules of his own criticism, of which the first is: "In matters which pertain to history, most credence must be given to those who wrote at the time when the things themselves were done, provided no other coeval of noted probity and learning gainsay." The second: "After coeval authors, more assent must be given to the writings of those who were nearer to the times of the deeds, than of those who were more remote": whence he most often insults the people of Marseilles.

[106] Come now, here the doctor Launoy exhibits to us a tradition of St. Mary Magdalene's Ephesian burial begun by Modestus, whereby he asserts the Ephesian burial; a writer of the seventh century, which he himself does not hesitate to prefer to the Provençal monuments, at which he would blush even to open his mouth, if he had not forgotten his own negative argument, by which from the silence of six centuries he can be invincibly cut down, so that with him and his followers all the authority of Modestus is vain and null. Have this demonstrated by Launoyan dialectic from the so long silence of those who could have known the thing and ought to have written it. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, writes to Pope Victor I, in Eusebius book 5, chapter 24, where, enumerating the lights which have been extinguished in Asia—besides John, who reclined in the bosom of the Lord, Polycarp who was bishop and martyr at Smyrna, besides Thraseas, Sagaris, Papirius, Melito—he adduces also Philip, one of the twelve Apostles, who died at Hierapolis, and his two daughters, who grew old as virgins, and also another daughter of the same, who lived inspired by the Holy Spirit, and rests at Ephesus; where, I say, enumerating these lights so accurately, he does not make mention even by a word of Magdalene, whom certainly he ought to have named in the first place, as a truly chief light, if in the second century, in which Polycrates lived, even a shadow of her survived at Ephesus, whom Modestus so confidently asserts both to have been a virgin, and her martyrdom to be there commemorated.

[107] I do not think that in this age in which we live any sensible person will be found so that if some Magdalene was a martyr there, who would simply admit any tradition begun in the seventh century, of which namely through so many centuries before neither trace nor vestige appeared, so that here we must almost confess that this history was, among others, coined about the sixth century, in which the learned think other things also were hatched from the egg of ignorance, so that without scruple it may be branded with the same censure with which Launoy deservedly transfixed Flavius Dexter. Nor indeed must Modestus be accused as a mere author of fiction: for it could easily happen that some virgin, distinguished with the name of Magdalene, was at Ephesus, the persecutions of the heathen raging, afflicted with martyrdom, whom the Ephesians confused with the more illustrious one; as we know was done, after the manner of men, only too frequently, and who there, as I shall say below, was found by St. Willibald (if however that history is certain enough), and by Magdalveus of Verdun, and perhaps by others, and whose relics were carried off into other parts, and at last the remaining body translated to Constantinople, of which translation the same Launoy heaped together various things from the Greeks, which it will be enough below to taste in a few words.

[108] that she must be another than ours. These things, unless I am mistaken, sufficiently enervate whatever authority of Modestus, nor yet would I neglect the other response of Natalis Alexander, tome 2, page 181, thus writing: "I respond, that Modestus, following the opinion of the Greek Fathers, recognized two Magdalenes, one a virgin, the other a sinful woman; whence, since he says that she who died at Ephesus was a virgin and martyr, he does not exclude ours, who was neither virgin nor martyr, but a sinful woman. Nay, from this it is gathered that, since there was in truth one Magdalene, and she a sinful woman, she died not at Ephesus, but in Provence. Although perhaps she set out to Ephesus, and thither accompanied the Virgin Mother of God: whence the Ephesians erected sacred monuments to her; and thence prevailed among the later Greeks the opinion that she died at Ephesus. Nevertheless the Greek monks dwelling in Cyprus ingenuously confess that from the ancient monuments of the Greek churches it is established that Mary Magdalene, together with Martha her sister, and Lazarus her brother, arrived in Provence, as is established from the epistle of Father Joseph Besson, professor of the Society of Jesus, given at Aleppo in the Orient on the seventeenth of April 1660 to Father de Gourdan dwelling in the house of Aix of the same institute: by which he testifies that he, in a conference held on this matter with the Cyprian monks, heard them ingenuously profess that Magdalene the sister of Martha and Lazarus was buried in Provence."

[109] Neither the bishop of Tours nor others prove the opposite: There follows in order in Launoy (not so scrupulous a chronologist) St. Gregory of Tours, that you may see the scraper neglect nothing; who, how much he elsewhere esteems the bishop of Tours, is well enough known; nor do the adversaries fetch weight to their opinion thence, wont to traduce his credulity, especially when he narrates external matters received on the faith of others. Nor does the Hodoeporicon of St. Willibald, published by us in the Acta in the first place on the seventh of July by a nun, bring any support, in which namely of the sepulcher of Magdalene or of the seven Sleepers there is not a word, so that these things were easily sewn onto another Life, written by an anonymous author. And indeed, even if I should freely admit all these things, you will prove nothing else than that perhaps some sepulcher stood at Ephesus wrongly attributed to the holy sinful woman Magdalene. The verses of Flodoard signify just as much; it is indeed true that near Bethany Lazarus was buried: "Here near Bethany, holy Lazarus, is thy sepulcher"; but it is no less true that Lazarus went out thence. Nor would I deny that his house, and that of his sisters, could have been changed into a church. The more recent testimony of Richard Wassebourg in the Antiquities of Belgic Gaul, concerning Magdalveus of Verdun, who also at Ephesus saw the body of Magdalene, and obtained two teeth with a portion of the hair, let it avail as much as it can avail; Launoy sets no value on it: all these things do not even lightly shake the most received opinion: This one thing all those handed down, after the first false witness, who falsely commended this very thing to posterity. Nor indeed is it so great a crime to accuse the Greeks of fiction, which how often it has been thrown in their teeth, those know who are not strangers in history or controversies.

[110] Behold now for you the array of Greek writers, under the lead of the anonymous one who continued the annals of Theophanes by order of Constantine son of Leo VI, as neither the other fabrications of the Greeks, where it is asserted that the emperor built a church…

which was dedicated to St. Lazarus… "and the body of the same blessed Lazarus, and of his sister Mary Magdalene, being translated, was there deposited." Will the defenders of the threefold woman admit these things also? Let them confess with us that the Greeks cohere sufficiently neither in the number of the women, nor in the time of the translation of those bodies, while some will have it done in earlier centuries, others first in the eighth, as Anquetin in Trevet, page 255, others in the ninth or tenth. You have there also Leo the Grammarian, George Cedrenus, John Curopalates, John Zonaras, the Menaea of the Greeks, the Anthology, and I know not what else, importunely and opportunely heaped together by Launoy from every quarter, with this sole aim, that he might turn St. Mary Magdalene as far as he could from Provence; doubtless about to adduce the Anonymous On the Places of Jerusalem, among the Symmicta of Allatius, page 88, where the sepulchers of Lazarus and the sisters in Bethany are described, if that little work had come into his hands: unless perhaps this had stood in the way, that it most expressly calls Mary the sister of Martha, Magdalene. But lest by recounting, weighing, and refuting each of these things I waste time and beget tedium, I shall use the single sponge of Alexander, by which he briefly washes out all these things, and shuts the mouths of the Greeks, or rather of our critics litigating from them, page 184, to this sense:

[111] He responds that the Greeks were deceived, so that by feigning several Magdalenes, which opinion being supposed, feigned everywhere in hatred of the Latins. they wrote that Magdalene, the sister of Lazarus, rests at Ephesus, and was thence translated to Constantinople: or that in hatred of the Western Church, which gloried in the possession of those relics, they substituted them under the names of St. Magdalene and St. Lazarus; which for the Greeks (to say nothing here of the proverbs once twisted against them) it is established is not unusual, from the epistle of Clement IV, Supreme Pontiff, to the most serene Isabella, sister of St. Louis king of the Gauls, given in the year 1268, by which he moves her from the opinion which had deceived her, that certain relics, brought from Greece, were the head of St. Paul the Apostle. "But if perchance," he says, "thou thinkest the head of blessed Paul the Apostle to be with thee, lay aside that conscience, lest thou be deceived, nor place a scandal to thy Mother the Roman Church, which would not equanimously tolerate a deception of this kind. But if the Greeks at some time said that they had it, do not marvel: for, hating the Latins, they easily formed a lie for thee, who by no means hesitated to lie about the Catholic faith, which is greater." This epistle he asserts to have been drawn from the Victorine manuscripts. In a word, let the adversaries exhibit to us fitting and certain testimonies of those Greeks, and most easily, me at least, who am led by no party zeal, they will have consenting.

§ XI. The Vézelay translation is set forth.

Another most turbid history is this, From the doubtful, obscure, and incoherent traditions of the Greeks concerning St. Mary Magdalene's burial and translation we pass to the Latins, about to explore laboriously, with what diligence can be, whether in this part of the city the sacred body of our Saint is to be found with certainty enough, which we think survives neither in Palestine, nor in all Asia, so that it must therefore have been carried into the West, nay into Gaul, whether the Saint herself came thither alive, or whether her sacred relics were afterward brought thither from elsewhere, and there deposited. For that at Rome also there are said to stand the remains of St. Mary Magdalene; what these are, of what kind, or when they came thither, I do not undertake to inquire, since in the Roman Martyrology our Saint is placed at Marseilles. To Gaul alone therefore is at last reduced the most thorny question, involved and entangled in so many difficulties, that, having struggled out of the Greek darkness, we run into almost denser darkness, out of which it is permitted to emerge only by groping.

[113] neither by Launoy nor by others rightly arranged, In a word, we gradually enter Provence, that arena of so many contentions and disputations, that the things which have been written back and forth, I am mistaken, if anyone can unroll them without immense tedium: besides that the work seems full of dangerous chance, as our Brietius once rightly observed at the year 1281, where, treating of Pope Martin IV, he thus writes: "He then sent to Sens a rib of St. Mary Magdalene, which he had set apart when he was present at her translation at Vézelay with St. Louis the king; whose testimony he furnishes, as also the diploma given this year, by which it is asserted that the body of St. Mary Magdalene rests at Vézelay, consonant with the diplomas of Lucius II, Urban III, Clement III, Innocent III, concerning which there is a huge contest between the Vézelay monks and the Maximin Dominicans, in which our friend, the man most learned from every quarter, John Launoy, knew it was dangerous to involve himself." But neither Launoy here nor others, however many you may number, do we, the hypercritics, delay over, inasmuch as our mind is not to contend, but candidly to set forth the matters themselves, so that neither is it pleasing to borrow the gladiatorial arguments of Natalis Alexander. This we do, that before we come to the capital controversy, we may clearly and sincerely weigh the things which have been opposed against the ancient possession of the Provençals by the people of Vézelay and their patrons.

[114] which is here examined from the egg, I have at hand a vast mass of papers, long ago preserved in our chests, in which both the Life of St. Mary Magdalene, and the whole history of that translation, or rather of the furtive stealing away, is depicted in various and especially in flattering colors, embracing chiefly this, that a certain Gerard of Burgundy, as it is there said, at least count in Burgundy, first founded that monastery of Vézelay for nuns, then, when it was overthrown, restored it, granted it to men, and wished the hidden relics of St. Magdalene there from Provence to be sought out, that they might be deposited in the church of the aforesaid monastery, for which inquiry there was chosen and sent Badilo, or Baidilo, a monk, the series of whose expedition, how marvelously, so variously it is narrated in several of our manuscripts, of which scarcely any agree among themselves, adorned with many digressions according to the capacity of the several writers: but which by Vincent of Beauvais were for a good part cut away, from whom the aforesaid history was transfused into the Golden Legend, St. Antoninus, Peter de Natalibus, Mombritius, and other Legends.

[115] In the Seclin manuscript that narration of the translation is thus begun: from very many manuscripts "Now therefore, the Lord granting, we shall undertake to set forth," namely after the Life has been premised, "in what manner the clod of the body of the same most sacred Mary Magdalene was translated to the place in which it is today venerated. In the year therefore of the Lord's passion or resurrection, more or less seven hundred and forty-nine, in the reign of Louis, most pious of kings, and also of his son Charles, there flourished peace and progress of the Christians and of the Catholic churches in the world; except for the infestations of the nation of the Saracens which happened chiefly from the parts of the Spains," etc. And these same things are to be read in others, although the several writers seem in rivalry to have added something of their own, I would almost say to have erred studiously, while they so foully confuse the times. In the Utrecht codex the series of years is set a little more fittingly, namely: "In the times of Carloman and Pippin, that is, in the year of the Lord seven hundred and forty-nine." Others combine with Louis the year 849, others descend to Charles the Bald and yet read the year 769: everywhere a great confusion of matters and times, to be more weighed below.

[116] In other manuscripts other things are asserted, in no way better founded, the Norman, then the Saracen devastations being premised, confused and changed in a marvelous manner. by which namely all Provence was utterly plundered and overthrown, but the city of Aix, whence they will have the sacred body carried off, destroyed by slaughter. Then the writers go on to mix in various other things, so that a little after they try to persuade that from the African parts, by I know not what Gentio, the relics of St. Martha also were brought to Vézelay, namely then when the body of St. Lazarus came to the Aedui: to say nothing of other circumstances no less incongruously deduced, with which all the manuscripts, with various other absurdities, according to the writers' rude talent, are amplified. But lest I linger longer over these, from one specimen you will make a conjecture about all the rest: for thus most of the manuscripts relate, which indeed embrace the whole matter in fewer words. I take the narration from the Seclin manuscript praised above, which has it thus:

[117] "For it was already long ago held ascertained by many far and wide, that Blessed Mary Magdalene, They report that Badilo was sent to Aix as has been set forth above, had been given to burial in the aforesaid city of Aix by the holy pontiff Maximinus, and that there her most sacred bones were preserved. Instigated at length by this report, both Gerard, Count of Burgundy, and Heudo, abbot of the aforesaid monastery of Vézelay, delegated with sufficient care to the city of Aix a certain brother, whose name was Badilo, with this devotion namely, that if, the Lord granting, he could find in those parts any pledge from the body of the most holy Mary Magdalene, returning he might bring it to them. Who, the journey being undertaken, supported by an honorable retinue of servants, arrived as prosperously as devoutly at the city of Aix. Which when he had entered, nothing at all seemed to him to have appeared in it save the image of extreme pestilence and death: and Badilo, perceiving so monstrous a public mourning of the Christian people, began to utter most grave sobs of tears from piety. And at last, mindful of the devotion of his journey, he walked about curiously, investigating whither, whether he might find anyone who would lead him to the tracking-down of the desire of the hoped-for thing."

[118] that from the ruins of the city he might steal the sacred body; "While indeed he was doing this, it happened that he saw, around the greater church which had been in the city, in the huts of the Andrones, conquered old men of decrepit age awaiting the arrival of some passer-by, for the sake of receiving sustenance. When he had seen these, he turned aside to them, cautiously inquiring in what place had been the church in which the body of Blessed Magdalene, once buried by St. Maximinus, was venerated by the faithful; and promising that he had come thither for this, not only for the present to adore in passing, but for love of that holy handmaid of Christ, there to remain longer, and no less also, so far as he could, to serve in rebuilding the sacred places. But they, hearing these things, very glad, promised that they would faithfully obey him in all things, and show what he wished. Then, a prayer being shortly completed, he invites them to a meal, since he saw them failing through long fasting: and so both being refreshed, rising from the meal they arose, that the aforesaid Badilo might more surely visit the desired place at the nod of those same old men." There follows the pointing-out by the old men, and the description of the whole mausoleum, in which namely in bas-relief work the life of the Saint herself was expressed, as the anointing of the feet, the apparition of Christ, etc.

[119] which by various arts he obtained "Then the place is cleansed, and I know not what altars are restored, and Badilo, dwelling there, is wonderfully honored by the inhabitants gradually returning, rebuilds some things, and strives to please all: until, a five-year lustrum being completed, all things being duly explored, he diligently intends upon an occasion of attempting a pious theft; and at last divinely inspired, an opportunity being found, on a certain night, approaching the mausoleum best known to him, the pious violator broke it open from the part of the feet, and looked upon what was contained within; and perceiving a body covered over with skin most whole, lying extended after the custom with the hands placed on the breast;

"for an odor of such sweetness thereupon boiled forth that no mortal could express it. Which indeed happened justly enough; for the body of her who deserved to anoint God incarnate ought to be the most fragrant of all. This at length the blessed archbishop Maximinus also understood in burying her, when he steeped her body with very many aromatics."

[120] carried it off to Vézelay. "Meanwhile on the following night it seemed to him that he beheld a certain most religious woman clothed in whitest garments, and she was accurately enough veiled about from the head; whose voice also intimated such things to that Badilo: 'Fear not,' saying, 'for we must go together with thee to the place predestined by the Lord.' But morning being come, strengthened by an aroma of this kind, secretly calling his men together, he charged them that on the following night they should be ready how to undertake the journey of returning home. They too, hearing these things, greatly rejoiced; and, silence being made in the coming night and the utensils prepared, he approached the sepulcher, and drawing out thence the body, as it was, as we said, most whole in every part, and wrapping it in cleanest cloths, with the rest of the furniture which he strove to carry off, placed it upon a vehicle. Thereupon undertaking the journey with his men, he most eagerly attempted to return," etc. Join to these finally the miracle, whereby the sacred body, approaching Vézelay, began to be weighed down with so great a weight that, however many should come up, they could in no way carry it thence. But after the prayer was ended, they proceeded with such agility… that they seemed rather to be carried themselves than to be bearing anything.

[121] I omit the rest of the history, equally inelegantly arranged, The first vestiges of such a tradition are sought, and the miracles of which perhaps below the discourse will recur. Vincent of Beauvais, I think, saw all these things clothed with so many circumstances, and not conveniently enough divided in their times, and so thought it better, the digressions being cut away, to weave a shorter discourse, easily adaptable to almost any century, which you have in his Speculum, book 23, chapter 152. And this is the true and sincere exposition of the whole Vézelay translation, at what age it was first consigned to letters I do not inquire too scrupulously: it does not seem doubtful that all these things began to be composed after the discovery of some sacred body in the church of that monastery in the year 1265, which those monks thought to be St. Magdalene's from a slightly older tradition. But the first vestiges of this tradition I have judged must be sought in the very Vézelay history cited above, whose first book consists of diplomas alone, in none of which is even the least mention made of St. Magdalene before the middle of the eleventh century, namely in the Pontifical bull of Pope Leo IX, page there 460, given in his second year, which was 1050, so that there, unless I am vehemently mistaken, the epoch of the Vézelay tradition seems must be fixed, an older than which I have hitherto sought in vain.

[122] In that century therefore the fame of the aforesaid tradition could grow somewhat, so that it penetrated even into Belgium, which first in the thirteenth century greatly prevailed. yet so that whence the monks had received their treasure they seem still to have been ignorant. But then, amid the various vicissitudes and troubles of that monastery, by which through almost the whole twelfth century it was harassed, the cult gradually failed, although the crypt, as the history says, page 616, stood above the sepulcher of the Blessed lover Mary Magdalene. But perpetual seditions, and contentions with the count of Nevers and others, easily involved that Saint in oblivion, so that only in the following thirteenth century the people of Vézelay thought the memory of their Saint must again be roused, which the instruments manifestly prove, described from the Vatican library by our Elders, which in the following paragraph it has seemed good to set forth entire, that those things may more clearly appear which it has not yet been permitted to find published among others. They bear the title of the second discovery; the writer meant to say of the Vézelay discovery, the weight of which, being now set forth, we shall weigh after the exhibition of the diplomas.

§ XII. Whose discovery was confirmed by diplomas.

"Further, when the aforesaid most precious body, or the most sacred relics, had at that time been most devoutly laid beneath the great altar, When there was doubt about the relics, and had there for five hundred years and more lain hidden concealed, and there came Kings, Dukes, Counts, Barons, Queens, Duchesses, Countesses, and a numerous multitude of the faithful of Christ to the sepulcher of that most holy Mary Magdalene, not only in any year, nay daily, and continually to be venerated with the greatest devotion, as if from every part of the world they gathered, especially since that place shone with frequent miracles through the merits and prayers of that most pious lover of God. But because little of her relics was exhibited to the pilgrims, it was doubted by some whether the oft-mentioned most sacred relics rested in that same monastery, as in her translation it was declared above. Wherefore for the discovery of the most sacred relics they proceeded in the manner which follows and in the form."

[124] Two bishops being invited "To all who shall inspect these present letters, Guy de Mello, by divine mercy of Auxerre, and Peter, by the same mercy of Paneas, bishops, greeting in the Lord. Since it was publicly said, and believed by almost all the faithful of Christ having knowledge of the place of Vézelay, that the body of the most glorious Mary Magdalene rested in the monastery of Vézelay, yet certain ones doubted whether she rested there; the religious men John, humble abbot, and the convent of the same monastery, holding for certain that in that monastery rested the body of the most glorious sinful woman, and wishing to cut off every scruple of hesitation from the minds of the faithful, humbly besought us that we should come to the said monastery, to search out and prove the certainty of this matter:

[125] they found several relics in a bronze vessel, "But we, assenting to their devout petitions, in the year of the Lord 1265, on the Sunday before the feast of Blessed Dionysius, came to the said Vézelay, and on that very night after matins, with the convent personally approached the place in which the said body was said to rest, and digging around there, we most devoutly found a certain noble vessel of bronze or metal, square and long, in a certain place beneath the great altar, and in the said vessel certain venerable relics, laid up with great veneration and wrapped in two silken cloths, and there was there an abundance of women's hair; which sacred relics that they were the body of the most blessed Magdalene is most manifestly declared from the testimony of the letters of the most illustrious King formerly Charles, found with those same relics, whose tenor is such:

[126] with I know not what testimony of Charles; "In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, Charles by the grace of God King. It is the custom of royal highness that, assenting to the supplications of the just, we confirm by the subscription of our own hand, and sign by the impression of our ring, those things which are to be commended to the memory of those to come. Therefore let the experience and industry of all the faithful know that in this sacred coffer is hidden the sacred body of the most blessed Mary Magdalene. The sign ✠ of Charles the most glorious King. But the relics thus given we joyfully wrapped, and with great attendance, out of piety and joy with a multitude of tears, we diligently inspected them, and afterward devoutly adored them.

[127] and they wrapped them decently in cloths, "At length we wrapped those same venerable relics in the said cloths, adding over them a certain linen and another silken cloth, lest, on account of the age of the said silken cloths, anything should perish from so most glorious a body or from so venerable relics. These being thus wrapped and also bound by us, we affixed our seals there, with the seals of the religious man Guerric, abbot of St. Marian of Auxerre, and of the venerable man master Peter, precentor of Sens: and these venerable relics with the said letters found there we laid back in the said vessel. Above the same vessel we the bishop of Auxerre affixed our seal in front, and behind we the bishop of Paneas and the said abbot of St. Marian of Auxerre nonetheless affixing our seals, and therefore laying back the vessel near its former place, and stopping up the same place as it had been before. In testimony and certainty of this matter we have thought fit to affix our seals to these present letters. Given and done in the aforesaid year of the Lord, on the Monday after the aforesaid Sunday."

[128] "These things thus performed, the aforesaid Lord bishops and abbot announced the aforementioned discovery of the holy relics personally to the most pious and most holy king, the most blessed Louis, a report of that matter being made to St. Louis. then reigning; which most blessed King, glorifying God because in his times the aforesaid most holy relics had been found, appointed and ordained a day, namely the vigil of Blessed Mark the Evangelist in the year of the Lord 1267, together with the most reverend father and lord Simon, Cardinal, then legate of the Apostolic See in France, for the aforesaid most holy relics to be solemnly raised, at which that most pious and most blessed King himself, together with the aforesaid legate, was personally present with many nobles; as follows:

[129] "In the year of the Lord 1267, on the seventh of the Kalends of May, on the vigil of blessed Mark the Evangelist, the most sacred body of the most blessed Mary Magdalene was placed in a shrine in the presence of the lord most pious Louis king of France, But he, coming to Vézelay, and in the presence of lord Simon, Cardinal-priest of the title of St. Cecilia, then legate of the Apostolic See in France, and in the presence of lord Guy de Mello bishop of Auxerre, and of lord John of Auxerre, at that time abbot of Vézelay, and in the presence of lord Alphonse Count of Poitou, brother of the aforesaid King, and in the presence of lord Theobald king of Navarre and count of Champagne, and in the presence of the three sons of the aforenamed king, namely lord Philip the elder, and lord John count of Nevers, and lord Peter; and in the presence of lord Hugh duke of Burgundy, and in the presence of lord Alphonse Count of Den [?], and in the presence of lord Gerald abbot of St. Germain of Paris, and in the presence of master Gaudric, with a numerous multitude of the faithful, both prelates, nobles, and peoples." Then there follows the form of the testimonial letters of the aforesaid most pious and most holy, most blessed king Louis, in these words:

[130] "Louis by the grace of God king of the Franks, to those beloved by him in Christ, the abbot and convent of Vézelay, greeting and sincere charity in the Lord. some relics received thence We send you, by our beloved and faithful clerk master G., archdeacon in the church of Paris, the bearer of these presents, the precious arm of the most blessed Mary Magdalene, and her cheek together with three teeth, which on the octaves of Easter last past, when we were present at the solemn translation of the same Blessed Mary, you delivered to us at Vézelay, which indeed, on account of the special devotion which we and all the faithful ought to have toward her, in golden caskets, adorned with various precious stones, namely the arm in a casket made in the manner of an arm, together with the hand, but the cheek in another casket, which is held between the hands by a silver-gilt angel, we have caused to be honorably placed; to be presented to you and your church on our part by the said archdeacon, in the presence of the venerable father Simon, Cardinal-priest of the title of St. Cecilia, legate of the Apostolic See, coming to our church for the sake of a visitation. But since you, concerning the most sacred body of the aforesaid most blessed Mary Magdalene, when at her translation, as was said,

we were present, liberally gave us a good portion, for which we return to you copious thanks:

[131] he adorns them most preciously and sends them back, "We, attending to your liberality of this kind, and wishing to adorn your church with veneration, transmit to you, as a gift, some of our most sacred relics, which we long ago received from the treasury of the empire of Constantinople: namely of the precious wood of the Lord, of the thorns of the most sacred crown of the Lord, of the swaddling-cloths of the infant Savior, of His shroud, of the purple garment in which He was mocked, and of the linen with which He was girded when He wiped the feet of His disciples in the supper; which relics indeed we have caused to be placed in the hand of the arm aforesaid. For it seemed fitting to us that relics of this kind of the Redeemer should be placed with the relics of that most holy woman, who so ardently loved Him, and deserved to receive from Him so large a pardon of her sins: by whom also He Himself permitted Himself to be so familiarly touched. We ask therefore your love, that receiving these so holy and so venerable relics with due honor, you take care to preserve them with the veneration which befits them. Taking heed that the aforesaid caskets and precious stones, added for their adornment, be not hereafter alienated or even sold. Moreover we ask you, that in your prayers and good works you be willing perpetually to have a special memory of us and ours. In testimony of which matter we have caused our seal to be affixed to these present letters. Done at Sens, in the year of the Lord 1267, in the month of July." Then follows the form of the letters of the aforesaid legate Simon.

[132] with the testimony of the Apostolic legate, "Simon, by divine mercy Cardinal-priest of the title of St. Cecilia, legate of the Apostolic See, to the eternal memory of the matter. The precious sanctuary which in these days the most Christian prince Louis, illustrious king of the Franks, transmitted to the monastery of Vézelay, pertaining to the Roman church without any intermediary, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the diocese of Autun, by the discreet man G., archdeacon in the church of Paris, and which the same archdeacon, in your presence and that of the clergy and people, presented and gave, on the part of that King, to the religious men the abbot and convent of the same monastery, namely the bone of the arm of Blessed Mary Magdalene placed in a golden casket, made in the manner of an arm, adorned with eighteen rubies, of which several are of the best and the rest are balas rubies, and twenty-nine emeralds, thirteen oriental sapphires, and thirty-two large pearls: also a part of the wood of the true Cross, and of the swaddling-cloths of the infant Savior, and of the purple in which He was mocked, and also of the girdle with which He was girded when He washed the feet of the disciples, and two thorns of the true crown with which in His passion He was crowned, situated in the hand of that arm: also the cheek of that Saint with three teeth laid up in a certain silver-gilt casket, which a silver-gilt angel, adorned with four balas rubies, and as many sapphires and eight emeralds, holds in its hands—wishing them to remain intact, and to be wholly preserved for perpetual devotion to that same monastery; by the authority which we exercise, we most strictly forbid that anyone presume to sell, diminish, or change, give, pawn, sell off, or in any way alienate so great a sanctuary or the aforesaid vessels or part of them, or any or one of the aforesaid stones; pronouncing the sentence of excommunication upon all who shall presume knowingly to come against our prohibition. Ordaining also and establishing, and in virtue of obedience strictly commanding and enjoining the aforesaid abbot and convent, that once yearly in the general chapter of the persons of the aforesaid monastery they cause the command, prohibition, and excommunication of this kind to be publicly read and diligently expounded, and solemnly published. Given at Clamecy, on the fifth of the Ides of August, in the third year of the pontificate of the lord Pope Clement the fourth." Likewise other letters of Indulgence of the same Legate.

[133] "Simon, by divine mercy Cardinal-priest of the title of St. Cecilia, who also grants indulgences of a hundred days. legate of the Apostolic See; to the religious men the abbot and convent of the monastery of Vézelay, pertaining to the Roman Church without any intermediary, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the diocese of Autun, greeting and sincere charity in the Lord. We doubt not that the faithful of Christ obtain the renowned joys of the merits of the saints, who by worthy services of devotion earn their patronage, and venerate Him in them, whose glory He Himself is, and the retribution of merits. Wishing therefore to give the devout peoples a cause for earning the everlasting joys, to all the faithful of Christ truly penitent and confessed, who in each of the four festivities which are celebrated of Blessed Mary Magdalene in your church, in which her body rests, each year, shall visit it with devotion and reverence, yearly there about to seek the pardon of their sins from the Lord of mercies, trusting in the mercy of almighty God and of His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and in that authority which we exercise, we mercifully relax a hundred days of the penances enjoined upon them. Given at Clamecy, on the third of the Ides of August, in the third year of the pontificate of the lord Pope Clement the fourth."

* Is it not "merua"?

* the eighth of the Kalends.

* xenio (gift)

* See Du Cange, s.v. Balascus.

§ XIII. Yet it does not at all seem to stand.

From the diplomas of the more ancient Pontiffs, The things now related in the preceding paragraph prove this one thing, that there was namely a most received opinion in that thirteenth century among the people of Vézelay concerning the presence of St. Mary Magdalene's body there, which through the whole preceding century we said had gradually prevailed; from which namely, the tradition then born about the diploma of St. Pope Leo IX of the year 1050, it was inserted into the supplication of the monks; concerning which so many other Pontiffs, confirming the said abbey and its privileges, and notably John VIII in the year 878 consecrating their church at Vézelay, did not make mention even by a word of St. Mary Magdalene, as you may see in the very Vézelay history the enumerated privileges and charters from page 458, of Nicholas I, John VIII, Stephen, John, Marinus, Benedict VI, Benedict VII, John XV, and Silvester II, who, since he sat about the beginning of the eleventh century, I seem rightly to have judged that, before the times of Leo IX, there was a deep silence about that tradition, at least in public rescripts, among the people of Vézelay: but when once it obtained and found a place in a Pontifical diploma, it is no wonder if the successors, whom Launoy objects, the Roman Pontiffs afterward following—Paschal II, Alexander III, Lucius III, Urban III, Clement III, Innocent III, Nicholas III, Martin IV, add also Gregory VII and however many others you may wish to name—it is no wonder, I say, if in their rescripts they merely supposed the same opinion, whose authority in similar deeds, related from the suggestion of the petitioners, how great it is, has already been so often said by us and is commonly known, so that it need not be repeated here.

[135] in which there is no mention of Mary Magdalene, Come now, note, if you please, what at last those pretended Pontifical declarations show us in this part. Namely in the diplomas or Pontifical epistles up to the times of Silvester II it is simply read that the monastery was constructed "in honor of our Lord the Savior Jesus Christ, and in veneration of the most blessed Mary the Genetrix of the same our Lord… and conferred upon Blessed Peter the Apostle," which is the very and true first institution. But in Leo IX the phrase is so varied that the monastery is said to have been founded "in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in veneration of the same Genetrix, and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and of blessed Mary Magdalene"; which you will convict of falsehood from the very instruments of foundation from page 446; in which no memory at all of the name of St. Mary Magdalene stands. Further, there the effort of the people of Vézelay did not stop, for from Paschal II they procured to be added that the sepulcher of Blessed Mary should be celebrated in the same church, whence Innocent III afterward following, in Natalis Alexander, grants that "in the solemnity of the translation of blessed Mary Magdalene within Lent each year… for reverence of the solemnity, the Gloria in excelsis Deo be sung": and on increments of this kind, as on props, the whole Magdalenic Vézelay history rests.

[136] the novelty of that tradition is refuted, But if the people of Vézelay think their tradition can be established thence, let them remember, I beseech, that from the silence of the more ancient Pontiffs it is more strongly shaken than it could ever be strengthened from the relation of the following ones, unless they produce at least a probable narration, from which we may be made more certain concerning the translation—when at some time and whence it was done, concerning its time and other circumstances; for how much the adduced instruments waver, from their mere analysis any reader whatever, led by no party zeal, even one blind, will perceive. I indeed marvel that the people of Vézelay did not take care, by the same labor, to vindicate to themselves the sacred remains of Saints Lazarus and Martha, likewise of the martyrs Andeolus and Pontianus, concerning whom I read in the epistle of Cono bishop of Palestrina, in the said Vézelay history page 483, that the Count of Nevers, most hostile to that monastery, broke the gates of the Vézelay cloister and further tore apart the bodies of Saints Lazarus and Martha his sister, and of Saints Andeolus and Pontianus martyrs, which how they came thither can be just as much proved as that the sacred pledges of St. Mary Magdalene were ever brought thither, whatever history of whose translation must fall by the mere, so to speak, explanation of the terms, so that we need not busy ourselves with resolving the authorities of Vincent of Beauvais, St. Antoninus, and the like, which long ago Melchior Cano so weighed by the just balance of history that they are not here to be overthrown.

[137] This I especially desire to be observed, that the writers of those relations held for undoubted which, from a double incoherent history that the sacred body of St. Mary Magdalene was brought from Provence, nay from the very city of Aix, to that monastery, and that that opinion prevailed among them in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when before, unless I am much mistaken, whence they had received those relics they themselves most probably were ignorant; whereby it happened that they confused two histories, namely that of the monk Badilo, of whom in that monastery in the eleventh century some memory survived, as of the bringer of the sacred body, with a pilgrimage into Palestine, because doubtless they then imagined to themselves that the aforesaid body could not have been brought to them from elsewhere, and then the fame of that matter, being spread abroad, grew widespread even into Belgium, so that Baldric, first secretary to Gerard of Cambrai, then bishop of Noyon and Tournai, a not undiligent writer of that century, made mention of it in his Cambrai Chronicle, yet so that he does not seem to have had firm faith in the rumors, since he cautiously added the word "is reported," as from his words in book 2, chapter 43, most openly appears. Thus he there speaks: "There is also a monastery of canons, in honor of the Apostles Peter and Paul, in the town which is called Lutosa, which Blessed Amandus built, and it is a rich abbey, where the venerable man of God Badilo rests, who is reported to have brought the body of St. Mary Magdalene from Jerusalem into Burgundy, to the place Vézelay."

[138] From these things it appears, I think, what concerning the arrival

of their relics the people of Vézelay thought before the middle of the eleventh century; it is no less shaken, but afterward, being taught that the body of St. Mary Magdalene rests not at Jerusalem but in Provence, another history altogether had to be substituted, and then namely they began to record that Badilo had not hastened into the East and thence brought the relics, but had carried them off by theft from Provence, the name of the pious violator being preserved, whom they made contemporary with their founder Count Gerard, who, since he had no small dominion in that region, and was moreover privy to the Provençal tradition, they feigned to be the author and instigator of finding and seizing the sacred body, by whose command the aforesaid Badilo went into those parts: and these things were thus generally added to the Chronicle of Sigebert, who, whether he himself be the author of that history, or another, he certainly so transmuted the whole matter toward the end of the aforesaid century, thus plainly recording: "A persecution being stirred up after the stoning of Stephen the protomartyr, Maximinus, one of the seventy disciples of Christ, crossing over to Gaul, brought Mary Magdalene with him. Her also, having died at the city of Aix, over which he presided, he buried. But the city of Aix being desolated by the Saracens, the body of that Mary was transferred by Gerard count of Burgundy to the monastery of Vézelay, built by himself. Although some write that she rests at Ephesus, having no covering over her."

[139] and from an enormous parachronism You understand that a step is here gradually made toward the Vézelay history, although the name of Badilo is not expressed. That passage Miraeus long ago judged not to be Sigebert's, on which matter it does not here please me to contend. Whoever is the true author of this scrap, in nothing abhorrent from Sigebert's style, betrayed his gross ignorance, when he commemorated to us Count Gerard at the year 745, whom it is established was then not yet in the nature of things, unless you most unskillfully feign that he outlived it by a whole century and a half, as from the unraveling of the whole matter it will presently appear more openly. But that that writer erred is not so much a marvel, since the people of Vézelay themselves invent almost all their Magdalenic matters only confusedly. You have above § XI those who, almost agreeing with the Sigebertine text, refer all things to the times of Pippin and Carloman, namely to the year 749, to which year if the history could be connected, this at least would become somehow tolerable, that all handed down concerning the Saracen devastations, inasmuch as it is most certain that they penetrated into Provence in the time of Charles Martel. But by what means at last a fiction of this kind may cohere with the very foundation of the Vézelay monastery, and be exempted from an enormous parachronism, I indeed desire to be taught.

[140] which Saussay swallowed with impunity. Saussay swallowed it intrepidly in his Gallican Martyrology on the eighth of October, where, referring Badilo among the Saints, he thus predicates of him: "At Lutosa, a town of Hainaut, the deposition of St. Badilo, abbot of the monastery which St. Amandus, bishop of Maastricht, there founded. That venerable man, when he bore the regular prefecture of the appointed place with great brightness of sanctity, being asked by Gerard of Roussillon count of Burgundy, most dear to Charles Martel prince of the royal house; having set out to Aix in the Phocean province (which the Saracens had lately laid waste), brought from that tract the relics of St. Mary Magdalene for the great part into Burgundy; and worthily laid them up in the monastery of Vézelay, built among the Aedui for this end by the aforementioned count. Which monastery, marked with so great pledges, Pope John VIII afterward, returning from the council of Troyes, with solemn rite and a frequent retinue of prelates, dedicated in honor of God and of the most blessed penitent. To which finally the arm also of this holy abbot was brought: who, the ministry of his faithful stewardship being performed, at last went, to be beatified, to the Lord."

[141] The Benedictine Annals show Here Saussay puts together things that do not stand with the rest, namely Count Gerard who before the year 745 built Vézelay, of which monastery the Sammarthani found no vestiges before the ninth century already well advanced, in which its first abbot Eudo is said to have presided in the year 846, but Gerard or Gerald of Roussillon the founder to have died at his city of Avignon in the year 849, as it indeed seemed to them, while meanwhile all things must be removed some years further; for the Benedictine Annals will have that monastery of Vézelay, and along with it that of Pothières, founded in the year 867, and the founders Count Gerard and his wife Bertha still surviving in the seventy-first year of that century, which see in the cited work, tome 3, from page 143: but both afterward buried in the already-mentioned monastery of Pothières; so that you may most manifestly perceive that from Baldric, Sigebert, Saussay, or historical accessions of that kind no support at all accrues to the tradition of the people of Vézelay.

[142] Nor is a whit more drawn out from another equally insipid fabrication, that they are ill-founded, related more fully in some sermon subjoined to the apocryphal Acts of St. Mary Magdalene in our large Vaucelles manuscript, namely that in the time of Carloman king of the Franks (and so in the eighth century) Adelgarius bishop of Autun (he flourished after the year 873) came to Vézelay to Eudo, archimandrite of the aforesaid monastery, who both, amid some conversations of religion, sent off Adelelmus a renowned soldier, who was the brother of Eudo, into Provence, that thence the most longed-for body, whose place of deposition Adelelmus well knew, might be brought to Vézelay; and he indeed quickly gathered not only the body of the most glorious Mary Magdalene, but also of blessed Maximus—he meant to say Maximinus, etc. What is this else than to say that the people of Vézelay were utterly ignorant of the origin of their tradition.

[143] Add now that another narration is there woven by the Sammarthani, those diverse little narrations of the people of Vézelay, that by the industry of that Eudo, first abbot of Vézelay, at the instinct of Gerard of Roussillon, the translation of the body of Blessed Mary Magdalene was made from the territory of Aix to Vézelay, and for translating it there was sent by the aforesaid the venerable monk Badilo, who is called the pious thief, in the year 849. And this epoch is, with the most current history of Badilo's theft, no less than the others incapable of being composed; since all these things fall in the tranquil season of Provence: where Badilo is reported to have come thither at that time in which through the incursions of the Saracens all things were so overthrown and desolated, that scarcely in that region did Badilo find men, scarcely a roof under which he might receive himself. Nay, that here again the praised Vézelay history goes off in a different direction, page 640, in which it is most expressly written: "In the year of the incarnate Word of the Lord 1166, but of the reception of the sacred body of the blessed lover of God Mary Magdalene the 286th," so that it is most certainly consequent that not before the year 880 (whence it occurred to Alexander to mark the year 875, I know not) was made whatever translation of the sacred pledges, nor with the times of Pippin or Carloman, nor with those of Louis or Charles the Bald—let us say, must it be connected with no times sufficiently.

[144] I wrestle longer than is right with the years ill arranged, so that at last it wearies me to linger longer over matters so inelegantly combined. in whatever way they be explained. Let the people of Vézelay turn in every direction whatever monuments of their monastery they can exhibit pertaining to the translation of St. Mary Magdalene, or, if you prefer, with Castellanus and others, of St. Mary the Bethanian; I am mistaken if from all those writings so ineptly stitched together you hammer out anything that can be reduced to right chronology, or at least a probable narration; so that one may plainly marvel that from instruments of this kind against the Provençals those wrongly struggled, whoever tried to impugn their tradition on that head. But indeed, "you dare to deny," you will say, "that the body of St. Mary Magdalene ever stood at Vézelay?" I will speak candidly, that this is by no means proved to me, from all the disordered things which have hitherto been produced: if more sincere ones be brought forward, I profess that I will freely give up my hands as conquered. But not a few miracles are recorded to have been wrought there through the intercession of that Saint. What then afterward? That miracles do not prove the real existence of such a body, has already often been demonstrated in our Acta.

[145] Of what kind the relics at Vézelay could have been. But why could not another Saint be venerated at Vézelay under the name of Magdalene, which we long ago showed, in this same work of ours, to have happened in nearly six hundred places? If this be not pleasing, say that some part of the relics was received from Provence in some way; which at last is the final solution of Natalis Alexander in this cause: for indeed that commonplace is trite from the Dialogue of Theodoret, "The Impassible": "We call even a part by common names. For entering the sacred temples of the holy Apostles or prophets, or martyrs, we ask, 'Who is placed in the chest?' But those who know the truth, answering, say either perhaps Thomas the Apostle, or John the Baptist, or Stephen the standard-bearer of the martyrs, or naming some other of the Saints, although sometimes very small relics are laid up," etc. But if the people of Vézelay will not acquiesce in these things, what it may be permitted them to make remaining of St. Mary Magdalene, I plainly do not see. Now the last part of this long and gloomy disputation remains to be discussed, or the cabbage to be recooked, with which the learned have long been surfeited, as I well know, yet certainly to pass it over untouched in this place is not permitted.

§ XIV. The possession of the Provençals hitherto most probable.

The Provençals in the past century As I have hitherto handled throughout this whole Commentary things uncertain, entangled, rough, and obscure, so I perceive that I shall again be involved in new darkness, and that almost Cimmerian, if I undertake to unweave and unroll the once most agitated controversy, in which on the one part is maintained the arrival of St. Mary Magdalene with her brother Lazarus, her sister Martha, Maximinus, and several other Saints, at Marseilles, or at the mouths of the Rhone; there is asserted her long sojourn, and the penitence of our Saint in the Balme cave, illustrious with notable miracles; thence her death, burial, and the constant and perpetual presence of the sacred body, first at Aix, then in the monastery of Saint-Maximin, of the Cassianite monks formerly, then of the Reverend Fathers Preachers; but on the other part it is most keenly contended that all these are feigned and merely fabricated, and that neither Magdalene, nor Lazarus, nor Martha, nor their male and female companions ever arrived in Provence, inasmuch as she was buried at Ephesus, thence carried off to Constantinople, or, if you prefer, brought from the city of Jerusalem to Vézelay, and certainly never saw Marseilles or Aix with her eyes. This is the struggle, this the fight, which exercised the Provençals for a whole twenty years and more, the leader and coryphaeus of the detractors being John Launoy, doctor of Paris, who set himself to disturb, shake, and utterly overthrow the possession of the people of Saint-Maximin.

[147] Launoy attacking most keenly He therefore published at Paris in the year 1641 a Dissertation on the fabricated arrival of Magdalene in Provence, which was to undermine the foundations of the faith and piety of Provence toward its patron saints, for the vindicating of whom our countryman John Baptist Guesnay soon opposed a great Disquisition on the Marseilles-arrived Magdalene, published at Lyons in the year 1643, which the critic at once tried to beat back with another little work, which he entitled A Disquisition of the Disquisition, hurried out in that same year. But to Guesnay there came as a supporter Michael Jordan of the Order of St. Dominic

family, with some moral discourses, to which he gave the title, "Reason the vindicatress of calumny," which did not come to my hands. A little more closely Honoré Bouche seemed to attack the adversary in his "Vindications of the faith and piety of Provence," in the year 1644; and again in the same year Guesnay, under the name of Peter Henry, in a Historical Appendix, in which he elucidates the decree of the supreme senate of Aix and also the censure of the University. Finally in the year 1647 he sent into the light a French epistle, "The Triumph of the Magdalene," whose author he made Denis of the holy Baume; snatched from the arena and from life in the year 1658.

[148] After some truces of the pertinacious conflict, Launoy again raised his standard, publishing his anti-Magdalenian little works augmented in the year 1660, was repressed with no less effort, in which from page 296 he more impudently explodes the Acts of St. Mary Magdalene; from page 328 he more petulantly shakes even Prierias; from page 346 the vindications of Bouche; and finally from page 376 he rushes upon, drives, snatches, beats, and prostrates Guesnay's Appendix and the other things objected to him. The last, whom I have seen, to withdraw his foot from the arena was the praised Honoré Bouche, restoring his Latin vindications in French in the year 1663, the title being turned, "The Defense of the faith and piety of Provence for its patron Saints," etc. What Vincent Reboul, what John the Scholastic Pitton, doctor of medicine, contributed in this same controversy, or what token they conferred, I have not been able to see: nor is Hercules Commodianus to be adduced here, the Launoy-scourge, in which, besides what has been said, only scourges, thongs, and whips are supplied, in no way conducing to illustrating the matters. And there at last stopped the itch of writing, litigating, replying, and rejoining, as the advocates say, both parties triumphing in their bosom over the victory won.

[149] To speak candidly, in all these there are many digressions, many digressions being mixed in, not a few trifles, sarcasms, invectives, jeers, word-battles, and whatever between contenders who rush with blind impulse can be said or thrust in, so that the mere reading itself creates nausea and disgust. Once therefore to have read them let it be enough, lest anyone think the same must be brought forward to him anew, or worked out afresh. In the midst are the printed little works, and the very instruments too, to dissemble nothing, expanded, contracted, combined, torn apart; so that, considered with a sincere eye, they conduce not much to the matter which alone ought to be at hand. The whole history of the Life there is no one of the Provençals who today dares to defend, no one who, in narrating the arrival of the Saints in Provence, agrees in every way with the current traditions, almost each one fashioning his own way for himself. Some arguments of Guesnay, Bouche, and Natalis Alexander drawn from lighter monuments are not such but that they can to some extent be cancelled, as indeed Launoy cancelled and dissolved not a few of them.

[150] For neither in all things does the anti-Magdalenite argue so badly, which it would be useless here to recount. unless, having overstepped the limits of sobriety, he had spread too far the sails of his hypercriticism, trying to gnaw, pluck, and utterly overthrow each point with a more biting tooth, aids little founded being fetched from every quarter. But if modestly and peacefully and closely, by adhering to a system, the arguments had been set forth on both sides, they would be a great help to us here, while meanwhile from so many litigious writings scarcely those things are hammered out which so explain the clear state of the question, to be confined within its certain limits, that all readers may easily judge of it by themselves. I will weigh the matter peaceably and compendiously, and with what clarity can be, all those things being cut away which are born rather to beget tedium than to teach the substance of the matter, about to prescribe those limits which may altogether exempt me from those thorny and odious byways.

[151] All apocryphal things being rejected, Lest therefore in explaining the history of the arrival or landing of St. Mary Magdalene, and of her life spent in Provence, or other circumstances, I be compelled to reconcile, by a vain effort, six hundred things conflicting among themselves, first I profess that I do not at all admit any Acts written under the name of Marcella, Syntyche, or another, whether in Hebrew or in Latin, nor other narrations of that kind, equally confused and distorted, from which you may scarcely elicit anything that can be reduced to sound sense, at least among the sensible. Of this kind are many apocrypha, such as a certain history under the name of Joseph, whose beginning is, "In the days of Claudius," etc. Besides, the little book concerning St. Magdalene's access to the Roman senate, that she might demand Pilate for the killing of Christ by judgment, and other things of that kind, which by Baronius long ago and by others have been consigned to insipid ravings: besides innumerable prodigies, which, as they are established by no certain faith, so may deservedly be rejected, until firmer considerations, which may persuade the matter, are brought forward: so that I remove all those things utterly from this inquiry, in which namely I have this one thing before my eyes, that the possession of the Provençals suffer no detriment.

[152] it is not to be shrunk from the Parisian thesis; I say and repeat roundly, that I shall by no means enter the sea of those contentions, and shall have enough therefore that, from the perpetual tradition of the people of Marseilles and of the whole region, strengthened duly by more than one instrument, it is most probably established that St. Mary Magdalene with her companions arrived in Provence at whatever time, undoubtedly lived there, there died, and there was buried; so that I do not greatly shrink from that thesis which in the year 1646, on the twenty-fourth of May, was defended in the Sorbonne of Paris for the act of Vespers, and is related in Bouche's French little work of the year 1663, page 29, conceived in these words: "Saints Lazarus and Maximinus, blessed Mary Magdalene, and her sister Martha, and Mary of James and of Salome, committed themselves to the sea, by the leading of divine providence, by which about the sixty-second year they arrived at the mouths of the Rhone in Provence, and afterward dispersed in it, St. Lazarus was made bishop of Marseilles, and St. Maximinus of Aix, blessed Magdalene withdrew into the Balme cave, Martha sought and inhabited the city of Tarascon, Mary of James and of Salome sought and inhabited that of Arles."

[153] but this I undertake to maintain, In these things nothing so much occurs as to exceed verisimilitude, nothing that is repugnant to approved ecclesiastical monuments, nothing that does not aptly agree with the tradition of the people of Marseilles, so that thereupon the possession of the sacred body of St. Mary Magdalene is asserted to the Provençals, inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on this twenty-second of July: "At Marseilles, the birthday of St. Mary Magdalene," etc., where Baronius rightly observes that "concerning her arrival with Martha and Maximinus into Gaul, both the ancient tradition and also the ancient manuscript codices teach," however much they may disagree in various circumstances, as happens when things done many centuries before are often connected with various popular rumors. Launoy formed objections, the Provençals and most recently Alexander dissolved them, whose works are most well known to the learned. This I undertake to maintain, which may suffice to guard and vindicate the faith and piety of the Provençals, namely that the sacred remains of St. Mary Magdalene survive in Provence, and are truly celebrated by the Provençals at Saint-Maximin with religious cult, with most constant veneration by supreme Pontiffs, Cardinals, bishops, kings, princes, nobles, and daily pilgrimages, concerning which the little works already cited can be consulted; here I will use these weights of reasons, which may dispatch the matter most briefly.

[154] Now above, § X, I think it has been sufficiently demonstrated that the body of St. Mary Magdalene, that the remains of our Saint survive at Saint-Maximin; of whom we treat, was neither at Ephesus, nor therefore translated from her pretended sepulcher there to Constantinople; but that it was ever deposited at Jerusalem or in Bethany is a scrap of corrupted Martyrologies, by no means worthy of refutation. Further, the Vézelay tradition has just been overthrown; so that I think no one will be found who would undertake a desperate cause; whom besides you would presently cut down by this reason, that in the discovery of the sacred body of Magdalene in the year 1279 a little schedule found manifestly showed that it was that very one which in the year 716 had been hidden for fear of the Saracens. Behold now for you the head of the whole matter contracted into very few words: Since by no probable enough arguments has it hitherto been proved that elsewhere the precious remains of our Saint stand, it is altogether consequent that the people of Saint-Maximin remain in their possession, nor are disturbed by any quibbles of the detractors. This possession the already-praised authorities of Guesnay, Bouche, Alexander, and six hundred others cited by them speak, from which I undertake here to illustrate one only (which may be instar of all), which being vindicated, you will understand with me, unless I am mistaken, that the whole matter is most probably placed in safety, by an argument, as they say, ad hominem.

[155] Nor indeed is there need of a long proof. The discovery of the sacred body made in the year 1279 cannot at all be denied, as the testimony found in the year 1279 proves, and long ago fully described from the authentic instruments themselves, most recently also published by Eckhard in the history of the Roman Pontiffs of Amalric Auger of Béziers, in tome 2 of the Writers of the Middle Ages, which not even Launoy himself dared to call into doubt, this one thing having chiefly tried, that, what was found together, the testimony of the identity of the body, he might convict of fiction and falsity, inasmuch as in it certain things were noted plainly discordant to him, which no one until then had sufficiently explained. The hinge of the whole matter turned on a little schedule or card, written in an old character, from whose lineaments, from the added year and king's name, no small handle for exercising criticism was afforded, the Provençals themselves, to save it, going off into different directions, so far that even Natalis Alexander receded most far from the true sense. But all these things Baronius's illustrator Pagi opportunely met at the year 716, where he accurately restored the schedule itself to its time, all things being resolved which could be opposed against it. Thus has the said card: "In the year of the Lord's nativity 716, in the month of December, at night, most secretly, in the reign of Eudo the most pious king of the Franks, in the time of the infestation of the perfidious nation of the Saracens, this body of the most dear and venerable Mary Magdalene was translated from its alabaster sepulcher into this marble one, for fear of the said perfidious nation of the Saracens, because it is safer here, the body of Sidonius being removed."

[156] which Pagi from the quibbles of the critics, To these things Pagi thus speaks: "That schedule still survives, which nevertheless on account of its age can no longer be read. But Bernard Gui, inquisitor of the holy faith and bishop of Lodève, about the year 1320, in his Speculum Historiale, relates the same, and says: 'This most ancient card I, who write these things, have read, and I saw it there in the sacristy (namely of the town of Saint-Maximin) reserved in testimony of the truth,' etc. The same also Philip Cabassole, bishop of Cavaillon and Cardinal, saw, as he himself testifies in the little book composed in the year 1355 against the monks of Vézelay, which stands in manuscript in the library of St. Victor of Paris. Finally the same words are read in the parchment book preserved in the convent of the Fathers Preachers of Saint-Maximin, and in almost all the writers who in previous

centuries have spoken of this discovery." Trouble was made by that Eudo king of the Franks, whom some transformed into Clovis, in which error was involved Cardinal Cabassole, who had read the schedule; for he says: "Eudo (Odoïnus) is called by the full name Chlodoinus, and in the Gallic tongue Chlodoveus Clovis": others entered upon other ways to dissolve that knot; Guesnay had almost touched the matter, but the praised Pagi made it plain.

[157] rightly and solidly vindicated: "These things," he says, "are vain, but tolerable in the centuries in which Scholastic theology filled both pages… But that Eudo king of the Franks is no other than Eudo duke of Aquitaine, who is found called sometimes Odo, sometimes Otto, Odoicus, or Odoinus." You may see there the rest most rightly deduced without disguise and gall, which most fully unravel me from further tricks; for it is enough and more for my intent that the aforesaid testimony is placed altogether beyond controversy, from which it most manifestly appears that the sacred body, translated under the beginning of the eighth century by the monks of Saint-Maximin, then Cassianites, as they will have it, was hidden for fear of the Saracens, and there after five centuries and more found whole, as by many authorities the praised writers openly prove, to whom for the rest I have thought the more curious readers must be referred, my office being abundantly performed; in that I have, at least most probably, preserved to the Provençals safe and sound their tradition, possession, and the most constant cult and veneration, to these very times, of the most holy lover of Jesus, Mary Magdalene.

[158] so that that tradition is most probable. All these things, as I have already said more than once, the Provençals laboriously confirm by several instruments related by Alexander, to which I here add one, nowhere hitherto, that I know, produced, found in our very ancient manuscript codex marked ✠ Ms. 98, in which G. or Gilbert, abbot of Westminster, contemporary with St. Anselm, as you have in tome 2 of April, page 942, proves the identity of the Evangelical women vigorously enough, by almost those arguments which have been adduced by us above, among which he urges also this, that St. Maximinus "led the blessed woman, namely Mary Magdalene, with him to Marseilles, and had her with him even to the end; afterward upon her tomb, on the one part in stone, he caused to be sculpted how she came to the feet of the Lord, washed them with tears… but on the other, how after the resurrection, as she was falling down at His feet, the Lord said to her, 'Touch me not,'" etc. From which this at least is drawn out, that the tradition of the Provençals was already in the eleventh century most received in England; which to note here in a word, we have not thought alien to our purpose; in no way terrified by the most modest authority of the illustrious Bosquet, first bishop of Lodève then of Montpellier, doubting in this matter, in his Gallican Ecclesiastical History, page 15.

§ XV. The cult of St. Mary Magdalene, the Marseilles Office and Acts.

Among the many wonderful and stupendous things which occur concerning this our Saint, this certainly must not be kept silent, All things are full of eulogies that, whereas everywhere in asserting the cult of the Saints whose Acts we illustrate no small labor must be bestowed, here the plain opposite comes to pass, since rather the sails must be contracted, when we treat of a Saint whose merits, virtues, honor, cult, patronage, and glory extend as widely as the whole universal Church extends. For who is there among Catholics who does not pursue St. Mary Magdalene with singular veneration? Inasmuch as she is the most perfect mirror of penitence, the vivid example of the most ardent love toward Christ, the most lucid prototype of all virtues; as Charles Stengel of the Order of St. Benedict once more fully showed in the history of the life of St. Mary Magdalene illustrated with a commentary, published at Augsburg in the year 1622, to which I refer the pious readers, imitators and clients of this our lover of Jesus. That Life would almost have been worthy to be here reprinted, had it not again and again turned aside to moral matters, and, besides the things which are taken from the Gospels, mixed in many others from the apocrypha, the author being in other respects by no means to be despised.

[160] The remaining arguments of a most universal cult almost all the Catholic cities exhibit in rivalry, and a cult most celebrated throughout the world, among which you may scarcely find any where either a church has not been built and dedicated to her, at least a chapel or altar, or a congregation erected under her name; likewise convents or monasteries, and refuges of penitent women, and other works of that kind, by which the name of St. Mary Magdalene is rendered most celebrated in every land. Nay, that in several dioceses of the Church her festivity has long been wont to be frequented "of precept," as we say, with that solemnity which is common to her with the Apostles, called by the Greeks, by a received word, synapostolos, by others commonly "apostle of the Apostles," as was also said above. Brief and elegant enough is Stengel's eulogy of this kind: "Among almost all the female saints of the heavenly kingdom, after that most blessed queen of heaven and earth the Virgin Mother of God Mary, none is more celebrated among the worshippers of Christ, honored with the honor due to the Saints, than St. Mary Magdalene herself, so that wherever the Christian world extends, everywhere they are wont to erect altars to her, set up images, painted tablets, and dedicate temples, perform sacred rites, and seek from her help and aid by solemn prayer and rite."

[161] Nor am I ignorant that in various churches of Europe her singular translations are celebrated, I think on occasion of sacred relics, in which nearly innumerable churches glory. Of what one our manuscript Florarium of the Saints treats on the twenty-seventh of February, I could not indeed easily say; and different festivities in various places; nor of what Grevenus with several other Martyrologies speaks on the twentieth day of March. In the same month of March, on the first day, in the Breviary of Hildesheim, the conversion of St. Mary Magdalene is marked, which is performed on the tenth day of the same month with a double Office in the church of Augsburg. And this too is inscribed in the already-mentioned Florarium on the seventh of April in these words: "Likewise the conversion of St. Mary Magdalene, in the year of salvation 32, of her life the 22nd," which where the author of that codex found, I do not inquire, nor what discovery he means, which is there related on the seventeenth of December and bound to the year of salvation 890. There would be no end, if it pleased to run through all our Martyrologies, and to survey Rome, Bologna, and the other cities of the Christian world, which here certainly, in matters so open, I did not think worth while.

[162] of the singular discovery today, of the year 1279. I spare therefore more things, that I may proceed to the chief and by far most celebrated discovery and translation, namely that, of which we have already often spoken, performed in the year 1279, all Provence applauding, whose memory in those parts, as most solemn, so in various churches there is most precious, most common, and most received; especially at Aix, where the Offices are extended to the whole octave: but to this our matter conduce most of all the proper Offices of the Saints of the Marseilles church, from which what we here give, our Charles Faber, elsewhere often and deservedly praised by us, caused to be described, and sent to Papebroch in the year 1680. This is there proper on the fifth of May, under this title: "The Discovery of St. Mary Magdalene, double. The whole Office as in her feast on the twenty-second of July, except those things which are here proper." Behold the prayer: "O God, who this day gladdenest Thy Church by the glorious revelation of the most sacred body of blessed Mary Magdalene; grant propitiously, that, whose presence and miracles we are illustrated by, we may deserve to obtain the perpetual benefits of mind and body. Through the Lord." The Invitatory: "Let us praise our God: in the discovery of blessed Mary Magdalene." In the second Nocturn.

LESSON IV.

Concerning which here three lessons By the singular providence of God it sometimes happens that the bodies of the Saints are for a long time in hiding, that by the recent miracle of the discovery their sanctity may more shine forth. For both by discoveries and by translations of sacred relics we multiply feasts, and the Saints multiply benefits upon us. This is as it were a certain resurrection of the Saints, which rouses up the buried and lying piety of the faithful, that the bones of the Saints, which are seeds of eternity, and the venerable temple of the Holy Spirit, may become for us aids of mortal life, and, out of the midst of death, living rivers of graces. Long ago, stolen away by the incursions of the barbarians, the body of blessed Magdalene had lain hidden, when in the year 1281, there was gathered, for this search, at Saint-Maximin, a synod, by the zeal and care of the most illustrious prince Charles of Anjou, over which presided the venerable William Long, Cardinal of the holy Roman Church, and chancellor of the royal majesty, with four archbishops, five bishops, ten abbots, and many doctors of sacred Theology and religious men, who, the testimonies, writings, and monuments regarding that matter having been examined and duly discussed, made a solemn decree that these were the true and legitimate relics of Magdalene, which was confirmed by Boniface the eighth, and received with the highest devotion of the faithful. But Thou.

LESSON V.

[164] So Magdalene, who once, after His resurrection, had so earnestly sought the body of her Lord, taken from the proper Marseilles Office was after death adorned with this glory, that her lost body was solicitously sought. All Provence rejoiced to have found the body, which had been a perennial victim of penitence, and which had lived more by the life of the Savior whom she loved, than by the life of the spirit which animated it. Those ashes which you see, not so much did putrefaction dissolve, as the flame of love: or if it please to say, love and death met together, that what the former had kindled for Christ, the latter might consume, and so both might complete a sacrifice pleasing to God. Yet because Magdalene, while still living, sought caves and grottoes in which, contrite for her sins, she might hide herself, she persisted after death in the same humility, and, buried together with her crucified Spouse, she wished to flee the gaze of mortals. To us Christ has today restored her, and heaped glory upon the squalor of the sepulcher, that we might run to Him in the odor of Magdalene's ointments, and by finding the body of the penitent, might receive the spirit of penitence. For it is nothing to celebrate the discovery of Magdalene, unless we also imitate her contrition. Let us indeed rejoice that Magdalene is found, but let us find ourselves lost by sin, and while we celebrate the solemnity, let us not lose the profit of the solemnity. But Thou.

LESSON VI.

[165] But if we inspect more closely the found pearls of the relics, the head of blessed Magdalene, have been taken. still consisting of its own bones, inspires penitence; and whereas dead bodies are wont to strike horror, that one wonderfully infuses love and veneration. But the greatest miracle shines in this head; for, as if Magdalene had said to death what once Christ had said to Magdalene, "Touch me not," death did not dare to touch that part which the Savior had consecrated with His fingers, and it still seems to retain signs of life, which alone would abundantly prove the truth of the relics. There have remained besides inviolate, and are preserved in a pyx, the most blessed hairs which that loving precious woman, holily bold, had inserted into the feet of her Judge and Savior as nets and bonds; so that those hairs which

we find as relics of Magdalene may partly be reckoned relics of the Savior Himself, on account of the reverence of the touch; who would that He might one day say to each one truly imitating Magdalene: "Many sins are forgiven her, because she loved much." But Thou.

[166] As to what pertains to the Acts, this too in our Saint is like a prodigy, Various Acts published, that of none have so many Lives been written, of none have any (I will say pious, or inept) compilers thought it permitted them so freely to invent for themselves whatever they wished, now amplifying, now contracting; each in rivalry scraping together for their own traditions whatever was thought to smell in any way even of the mere appearance of truth. Hence those which, of which I spoke above, were published by Vincent of Beauvais, Jacobus de Voragine, Peter de Natalibus, St. Antoninus, and so many others, to which was sewn on almost that tradition by which it was wrongly asserted that the body of St. Mary Magdalene had been translated to Vézelay. The history of Marcella I do not here adduce, because it has long ago been relegated among the apocryphal narrations: nor do those things today deserve to be named which Surius transferred into his Legend from Silvester Prierias (here too credulous), where the pretended miracle of Barcelona, wrought in the king of Sicily, clothed round with wondrous ornaments, in some way supplies the place of Acts, now overthrown by so many arguments, even by Natalis Alexander, that it is better to be silent about it than to renew an ungrateful memory. Nor has the revelation of Friar Elias, there displayed, obtained greater authority in this age, etc.

[167] and very many manuscript ones, If we come to the manuscripts, scarcely a codex exists in our Museum (where there is so great an abundance of them) in which some Legend of St. Mary Magdalene does not occur, either described from those already cited, or from elsewhere augmented, transposed, contracted, and diversely adorned according to the writer's talent. To these are added copies gathered hither from various parts. Two Lives our Peter Francis Chifflet, immortally deserving of the Acts of the Saints, described, from a manuscript codex of Valloire, and likewise from another of the Charterhouse of Dijon; which last agrees well enough with that which is exhibited in our large Vaucelles codex; but in the Chiffletian there follows another Life of Saints Mary, Lazarus, and Martha, extended to fifty chapters, of which not a few Chifflet judged must be omitted, and they are doubtless the famous Marcellian Acts, which it is enough to have named. Likewise another Legend the same Chifflet described with disproportionate labor, from a codex of St. Just of Lyons, of 24 pages in folio, not much unlike the rest, and so no more worthy of the light or the press.

[168] But of which none can be admitted, Add to these a relation concerning the life and conversation of St. Mary Magdalene from the manuscript of St. Vitus in Gladbach, of the territory of Jülich, which was compared with the manuscripts of St. Maximin at Trier, of Prague, etc., and fills sixty pages in all. Then indeed a work equally vast, which you would say was born from the other, in the Rebdorf manuscript and another of Marchiennes. Likewise other Acts from a manuscript codex of the fifteenth century, which was of St. Alban's near Trier, of the Carthusian Order; to omit so many others, which it would be most tedious even to enumerate, much less to set before the readers' eyes, as also very many histories of translations, of which above I think enough has been treated. Let it be permitted to assert that all those Legends, of whatever kind, seem of so slight moment, and have long been so despised by the learned, that to besprinkle our Acta with them I have long counted a scruple and a religious hesitation. Let all lovers of Magdalene believe me, that there is none of them which a sensible reader could patiently unroll; so that therefore I judged they must be plainly neglected, as also the sermons of Denis the Carthusian, pious indeed, but for the greater part besprinkled with apocrypha, content with the sole eulogy or sermon long ago published by Mombritius, which we receive from the Fleury and Cluny libraries, the rhythms and hymns being omitted from which nothing of moment may be learned.

[169] Here therefore there shines before us the most well-known edition of John du Bois, dedicating the sermon of his Odo to the most reverend Claude de Guise, most noble abbot general of the monastery and of the whole Cluniac Order, so that we have preferred the encomium of abbot Odo. with a preface not at all pertaining to this our matter. The sermon itself we give of abbot Odo, among the ecclesiastical writers so long celebrated in Labbe that it needs not our commendation. I say a sermon rather than a series of the life, but composed in such a manner that it pursues accurately enough whatever in the evangelical history pertains to St. Mary Magdalene; by no means doubting, as was in the tenth century the most received opinion of the whole Church, that both the sinful woman and Mary the Bethanian must be confused with St. Mary Magdalene; would that he had so clearly indicated somewhere that the opinion of all Gaul concerning the same Saint deposited at Marseilles or at Saint-Maximin was equally common in his time; which question, that it was not controverted at that time, even from this head you plainly understand. Let it be enough for us to hand down the sermon as it was then written by Odo.

* al. 1280

SERMON

On St. Mary Magdalene

By Odo, abbot of Fleury and of Cluny.

Mary Magdalene, at Marseilles in the Province of Gaul (St.)

BHL Number: 5439

By Odo of Fleury.

Although, propagated through the four climes of the world by the connection of the faithful, the sacred Church celebrates as most holy the distinctions of the most sacred Mary Magdalene, by the example of pious imitation: About to set forth an example, and although in the writings of the most blessed Evangelists there is held her devotion's diligent service, and her persevering servitude and immense fervor of love, and the ministration of that holy familiarity, and, even to the triumph of the Lord's passion, an ineffable constancy; and also what she did in the death of her Redeemer, even the Apostles fleeing, and that the Lord Himself, the Angel of great counsel, rising from the dead, first appeared to her; nevertheless, consulting the profit of the readers, those things which, in the manner of gems, illustrate the pages of the holy Scriptures concerning the little flowers of her virtues, and in some way render them blooming by the impression of their radiance, we have taken care compendiously to foretaste. So that if anyone perhaps has not leisure to run through in order the sea of the most holy Gospel, in which are contained the heraldries of so great a faith, at least, kindled with desire of her, let him not refuse to read this little schedule of our smallness.

[171] There was therefore, according to the pomp of the world, the most blessed Mary sprung of most illustrious birth, he begins from the nobility of her race, who, as the traditions of the Fathers assert, was named Mary Magdalene from the castle of Magdalum. Whom not only the dignity of her stock, but also the rights of her patrimony, by the death of her parents, rendered splendid: so that the doubled honor spread the excellence of her name round about. For among men the names of the rich are wont to be known more than those of the poor. But because sometimes pleasure follows as a companion of the affluence of things, she subjected the times of her younger life to slippery wanderings, the reins of chastity being loosed. For this is the woman of whom Luke the Evangelist writes: "Because there was a certain woman in the city, a sinner, to whom, because she loved much, many sins were forgiven." And of whom Mark says: "But Jesus rising early the first day of the week appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons." But how pious and merciful toward converted sinners God has been, the perfection of this woman proves, who not only deserved the washing away of her crime, but, made a partaker of the Apostles, was given to them as the messenger of the Lord's resurrection. But she, afterward inspired by the divine Spirit, and reverberating the gaze of her mind upon herself, and not enduring the losses of her former life; when she learned that the Lord and creator of all the human race had come into the house of Simon, who had come not to call the just, but sinners to penitence, not, on account of the enormity of her crimes, distrusting the clemency of her Maker, having received a most precious ointment, hastened with quick step to the very fount of mercy; falling down before the merciful footsteps of the Lord, and heaping up the bitterness of her heart through an abundant fount of tears. Presently then with the weepings of compunction she began to bedew the feet of her Fashioner, and to wipe them with the hairs of her devotion; and unceasingly to cherish them with kisses of true humility, and to anoint them with the most pure ointment of her love.

[172] and from the zeal of her conversion. Who, since in such service of devotion she was not repudiated, but rather mercifully received, trusting in the boldness of familiarity, poured also over the most holy head of the Lord the odor of the most precious liquor. So much that the whole house was fragrant with the fragrance of the odor after the manner of aromatics; namely bringing forth nothing with her mouth, but by the benefits of exterior obsequiousness intimating the flame of her compunction and the fervor of her love, and as if she spoke with these very words, saying: "O Lord Jesus most clement, who knowest all things and art the true inspector of hearts, who willest not the death of sinners, but rather that they be converted and live, Thou Thyself understandest what my sobs demand, what my tears drawn from the depth entreat, what my bitter groan implores. I am a sinner and unclean, and polluted with the stain of all abominable crimes. But because I have contaminated my life from earlier years, to Thee, my Lord, who art eternal life, I flee for refuge; that Thou mayest restore my ill-lost life, and clemently snatch me from the jaws of the abyss, mercifully free me, powerfully draw me out, who alone considerest labor and sorrow." But what she obtained from a profession of love of this kind, the Lord Himself manifests, who, to Simon indignant why He permitted a sinful woman to approach Him, turning to him, answered among other things: "Amen I say to thee, many sins are forgiven her, because she loved much." Who, having obtained the clemency of the Lord, as Luke describes, at once, all things being set aside, was made so familiar that she followed Him not only in mind, but also in body, ministering to Him of her own substance, as being very wealthy, food and clothing; fulfilling in a double manner the Lord's precept who says: "He who ministers to me, let him follow me."

[173] But mystically this most blessed Woman designates the holy Church. comparing her mystically to the Church, Who is well said to have come into the house of Simon, and to have been cured of all the contagions of her former life. (For Simon is interpreted "obedient") boiling away her former errors, she anathematized them, and, setting aside all filth of idols through the water of baptism, obtained the pardon of her sins, and daily follows the Lord not by the step of the foot, but by the imitation of the work. But this Woman bedewed the feet of the Lord with tears of penitence, and anointed them with the ointment of pious confession; because the Church, believing the Lord Jesus Christ true Lord and true man, daily for her excesses entreats His washing with the sobs of tears. And while she receives and preaches with worthy reverence the mysteries of the assumed humanity, because He deigned to converse among men; verily upon the feet of the Lord she pours the pistic, that is, faithful, ointment of nard. Who speaks in the Canticle of love, saying: "While the King was on His couch, my nard gave forth its odor." Which words indeed, according to the letter, she fulfilled with the hands of blessed Mary Magdalene; and daily spiritually she ceases not to fulfill, when, gloriously bearing praises to the Creator into the whole breadth of the world, she says: "But thanks be to God, who always triumphs us in Christ,

Jesus, and manifests the odor of His knowledge through us in every place, because we are the good odor of Christ to God."

[174] Who, since she confesses and preaches, with fitting religion and reverence, the sublimity of the divine majesty, which is equal to Him with the Father, whose adversaries she shows. and, so far as the vigor of her natural talent, suffused with the illumination of the supernal light, knows, honors it with worthy veneration; and extends the edge of her mind to contemplate so great a power, she assuredly anoints His head with the most precious ointment. But that Judas Iscariot is said to have been indignant against this most holy Woman, for the pouring out of so great an ointment; it is openly given to understand, that the reprobate and the unfaithful daily rage against the holy Church; and derogate from her religion and devotion, seeing that through the four quarters of the world, by her doctrine and examples, the power of the Lord's divinity, and the clemency of His humanity, have shone to all. Whence also of this holy Woman, who came beforehand to anoint the body of the Lord, He Himself says: "Amen I say to you, wherever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she has done shall be told in memory of her." Since not only in the whole world is it preached of this holy Woman that she anointed the head of the Lord; but also of the Church. For daily, as already foretasted, she works this in her holy actions.

[175] Well also is she called Mary Magdalene: but Magdalum is interpreted "tower," Magdalum is interpreted "tower." and signifies the Church. For a tower is not only a loftier, but also a safer house: not easily open to enemies, and by this it designates the Church, which, deserting earthly things, desires heavenly ones, fighting among spiritual wickednesses, and committing her fortitude not to herself, but to the Lord, prays with the Prophet, saying: "Be Thou to me a tower of strength, from the face of the enemy." This is that strong and impregnable tower, to which by the voice of the Spouse in the Canticle of Canticles it is said: "Thy neck is as the tower of David, which is built with bulwarks. A thousand shields hang upon it, and all the armor of the strong." And of which Solomon says: "The name of the Lord is a most strong tower; to it the just man runs, and shall be exalted." But since, compelled by the interpretation of the name, we have departed a little from the historical surface, it pleases to behold the most clement familiarity of the Lord toward blessed Mary and her sister Martha: and their service of pious devotion in all things.

[176] The deeds in Bethany, For we read, Luke the Evangelist narrating, that Jesus entered into a certain castle, and a certain woman named Martha received Him into her house, and this woman had a sister named Mary, who also, sitting beside the feet of the Lord, heard His word. But Martha was busy about frequent ministry. Whence she takes up a complaint not only against her Sister, but also against the Lord Himself, saying: "Lord, hast Thou no care that my Sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her therefore that she help me." But He who is no respecter of persons, but judges the merits of each, and knows that the soul is better than the body, as spiritual food than carnal: so praises the work of one that He does not blame the other: but says: "Martha, Martha, thou art solicitous, and art troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary; Mary has chosen the best part, which shall not be taken from her forever." But spiritually these two most devout Women, who received the Lord into their house, signify the two lives of the Church, namely the active and the contemplative. Through Martha therefore, who was about frequent ministry, the labor of the active life is expressed. But through Mary, who, sitting beside the feet of the Lord, perceived His word with intent mind, the sweetness of the contemplative life is signified; whose savor, the more it is tasted, the more is the mind separated from visible things and from the tumults of cares. For all temporal things being despised, the mind alone desires to be with God. For it delights to hear the heavenly precepts, as this most blessed Mary did, who, sitting beside the feet of the Lord, perceived His word with intent ear.

[177] where Lazarus dead, There was fulfilled in her what once by blessed Moses had been said, "And those who draw near to His feet shall receive of His doctrine." For how most acceptable she was held before the clemency of the Creator, for the service of her devotion and the inextinguishable fervor of her love, John the Evangelist manifests: where he describes the venerable and unheard-of raising of the four-days-dead Lazarus. "Jesus," he says, "loved Martha and her sister Mary, and Lazarus"; and in what follows he commemorates that, called by her sister, when she came where the Lord was, she fell down before His feet, saying: "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But Jesus, when He saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her weeping, groaned in the spirit, and troubled Himself, and said: Where have you laid him? They say to Him: Lord, come and see: and Jesus wept." Manifestly showing forth the clemency of His piety from the assumed humanity, when, for the enormity of that grief, He did not disdain to pour tears of His compassion, the divine mystery being nevertheless preserved. The loftiness of stock, and the dignity of secular pomp, of blessed Mary Magdalene is discerned in this deed; when now, at the four-days' death of her brother, so great a multitude of noble and powerful Jews flowed together to mitigate her grief. And they did not suffer her to hasten to the tomb of her brother without their presence, saying: "Because she goes to the sepulcher to weep there."

[178] Finally this was procured by the mercy of the Lord, he is recalled to life. that, about to work so great a miracle, many of the Jews should be present. So that, while one is raised in body, some might be raised up in mind, and be witnesses and most ready praisers of Him. Whence in what follows the same Evangelist relates, saying: "The crowd therefore bore witness which had been with Jesus, when He raised Lazarus, and called him from the tomb." But typically this Woman, weeping over her four-days-dead brother, prefigures the holy Church, who ceases not to lament for the peril of those who are held liable to crimes, and, entombed by the habitual stain of mortal sins, have driven forth from their bodies the fame of a most evil reputation. For we are all brothers in Christ. But the Lord is said to weep over the death of Lazarus, when, by the regard of His mercy, visiting hearts of this kind through the grace of compunction, He inclines them to the laments of penitence. But He is said to do this Himself, because, that we may most intently accomplish it, He procures it by the instinct of His inflaming. Such assuredly is also that: "For the Spirit Himself asks for us with unspeakable groanings." And as Lazarus after the pouring out of tears, the crowds marveling, is raised from the body: so also sinners, after the tears of compunction, worthy maceration of the flesh being performed, are raised in soul, the Lord promising by the prophet to the impious, who says: "In whatever day the sinner shall be converted, and shall groan, all his sins shall be delivered to oblivion."

[179] But these things being briefly foretasted, we must come to the constancy of her faith and the ardor of her most fervent love, The constancy of faith, and also to what she specially and familiarly did in the passion of the Lord; to be admired, nay rather to be imitated, by all mortals. For this holy Woman, having followed the Lord, as we have already said, and ministering to Him most devoutly of her most ample substance; after she saw Him seized, bound, scourged, deluded with all mockeries and derisions, and at last for the salvation of the human race placed on the cross; the disciples too, who before said, "Let us also go, and die with Him," having turned their backs: she remained with Him, because she who had loved Him more closely and fervently could not be separated even from the dead. And so was fulfilled, in the time of the Lord's passion, what once by blessed Job had been said: "My bone hath cleaved to my skin, the flesh being consumed, and only the lips are left about my teeth." For as if, the flesh being consumed, the skin cleaves to the bone, when, the disciples fleeing, blessed Mary Magdalene persevered with the Lord. And she remained so long, until she saw Him, seasoned with divers aromatics, placed in the sepulcher.

[180] of love, But thence, mourning and kindled with excessive grief, withdrawing, plainly going to the known place of the sepulcher of her Redeemer, she bought aromatics, and that very night, so far as she could, prepared ointments. But on the Sabbath, according to the command of the law, she rested. But when the sun set, she gave her labor to preparing what remained of the ointments. But early on the first day of the week, when it was yet dark, she came with the prepared aromatics to the sepulcher, desiring to anoint His most sacred body, whom, living, she had loved with excessive love. For whereas the female sex is wont to be timid in walking in the darkness, she feared nothing who loved the Lord with her whole heart. For there was in her a perfect charity, which casts out fear: for neither on account of the frailty of her sex, nor on account of the size of the stone, nor on account of the fear of the guards, did she turn aside from the begun journey, until she came intrepid to the sepulcher of the Lord. Whose Woman's constancy is beautifully prefigured in the book of Kings, when the Philistines applied the calving kine to the cart, and shut up their calves at home. But the kine went, as it is written, straight forward, by the way that leads to Beth-shemesh, going and lowing, yet not turning aside to the right hand or the left.

[181] and perseverance in seeking, So also blessed Mary Magdalene, desiring to visit the sepulcher of the Lord, went as it were lowing and groaning, who for a time had been deprived of the presence of her Lord, offering an imitable example to all the faithful, that, walking by the way of God, neither on account of the temptation of demons, or the fear of men, or the care of parents, we should deviate from the begun journey, because to those who begin the reward is promised, but to those who persevere it is given. But allegorically there was darkness in the heart of this most sacred Woman, when she came to the tomb of the Lord: because, ignorant of His resurrection, she sought the living among the dead. But then the sun rose in her mind, when she not only saw that He had risen, but also believed, and saw the stone taken away from the tomb. And because she did not find the body of the Lord, she believed it stolen, and in haste announced to the disciples what she had seen. Of her truly, in the voice of the Church, it is said in the Canticle of Canticles: "In my bed by night I sought Him whom my soul loveth, I sought Him and found Him not, I will rise and go about the city, seeking Him whom my soul loveth. The watchmen who keep the city found me: Have you seen Him whom my soul loveth? And it came to pass, when I had passed by them a little, that I found Him whom my soul loveth. I will hold Him, nor will I let Him go: until I bring Him into the house of my father, and into the chamber of her that bore me."

[182] until the lost Spouse For, as we said, this sacred Woman ran, and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them: "They have taken away my Lord from the tomb, and I know not where they have laid Him." But they, running, came to the tomb,

and so they found it as the Woman had said. The disciples therefore went away, and returned to their own homes. But Mary stood at the tomb outside weeping. It must be considered in this place, how great a love of the Lord had kindled the mind of this Woman, who, even when the disciples departed from the tomb of the Lord, did not depart. And because she did not cease from her inquiry, she deserved to see Him first. She weeps therefore, because she saw not Him whom she greatly desired. She was weeping, because she thought the body of the Lord had been stolen from the tomb. But while she wept, she bowed herself down, and looked into the tomb. For she had already seen the tomb empty, and had announced to the disciples that the Lord had been stolen from the tomb. What is it that she again bows herself, unless because she again desires to see? For example, just as, when we lose some thing, although we seek it by running to and fro more often, yet we run and look more often to that place where we remember to have placed it. So also this holy Woman, although she ran to and fro seeking the body of the Lord; yet anxious about His absence, she frequently looked at the tomb where she knew Him to have been placed. Whence, even if she did not immediately deserve to see the Lord, yet she was not deprived of the vision of the angels. For she saw two angels sitting in white, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been placed.

[183] They say to her: "Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?" that she may in some way find Him. The angels asked, not to diminish the desire of seeking, but to increase it. For thus, when we weep on account of a loss, if anyone inquire the cause of the weeping, he rather accumulates the lamentation. So also they inquired the cause of her grief, that by weeping they might increase her desire, knowing that "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted." But the Woman manifests for what cause she wept, when she adds: "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." When she had said this, turning back, she saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Rightly, that she might deserve to see the Lord, she is said to be turned back, for he who turns back directs his eyes thither where before he had his back. For she was as it were turned back, when, setting aside the mists of doubt, she began in part to believe the resurrection of Christ. To whom nevertheless the Lord so suspended the vision of Himself, that because she loved, but did not believe that He had risen, she both saw and did not recognize Him. Whence the Evangelist says: "She, thinking that it was the gardener, said to Him: Lord, if thou hast taken Him away, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away." For the force of love has this property, that whom each greatly loves, he thinks all love. But this Woman did not err altogether, when she reckoned the Lord to be the gardener. For as it is the office of a gardener to root out noxious herbs, that the good ones may be able to thrive, so the Lord Jesus Christ daily roots out vices from His garden, that is, from His Church, that virtues may be able to grow.

[184] But whereas the female sex is frail to bear burdens, The female sex ennobled. she, on account of the greatness of her love, reckons it light and possible, saying: "If thou hast taken Him away, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away." Jesus says to her: "Mary"; she, turning, says: "Rabboni," which is to say Master. Jesus says to her: "Touch me not." Because the Lord above called her "woman" by her common sex, and was not recognized: He called her by her proper name, that at least, recognizing Him, she might recognize herself known. For He says: "Mary." For since with the Lord the number of the elect is certain, great grace is given to those who are manifested to be known to God by their proper names. Such was Moses, to whom it was said: "I have known thee by name." Whence the Woman, after she was called by her proper name by the Lord, at once recognized Him recognizing her, saying: "Rabboni," which is to say Master. But saying this, she at once fell down to the ground, wishing by adoring to hold His feet, recognizing Him, called by Him by name. To whom it is said by the Lord: "Touch me not." Where it is not to be thought that after the resurrection He refused the touch of women; since of two departing from His tomb it is said that they approached and held His feet. But therefore He forbade her from His touch, because He perceived her mind not yet perfect in faith: when she sought the living Lord among the dead.

[185] Why He fears to be touched. But why He was unwilling to be touched by her is manifested, when it is added: "For I have not yet ascended to my Father"; that is, because thou seekest me among the dead as dead, and dost not yet believe me equal to the Father according to divinity, "Touch me not." For into her mind the Lord did not ascend to the Father, who does not believe Him to be equal to the Father. And because blessed Mary had not yet perfectly known the power of His divinity, she was then forbidden to touch His feet. "But go to my brethren, and say to them: I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. And Mary came, announcing to the disciples, Because I have seen the Lord, and He said these things to me." For the most clement piety of God is here declared toward the female race. For because through a woman death had been brought into the world, lest the female sex be ever held in reproach, He willed through the female sex to announce to men the joys of the resurrection; through whom the sadness of death had been announced. As if it were said: "From whose hand you received the cup of death, from her mouth hear the joys of the resurrection." And as through blessed Mary ever Virgin, who is the sole hope of the world, the gates of paradise are opened to us, and the curse of Eve shut out: so through blessed Mary Magdalene the reproach of the female sex is blotted out, and the splendor of our resurrection, arisen in the Lord's resurrection, was pledged forth by her.

[186] She was the apostle of the Apostles. Whence well is Mary interpreted "star of the sea." Which interpretation, although it specially suits the Mother of God, through whose virgin childbearing the Sun of justice shone upon the world; yet it can also suit blessed Magdalene, who, coming with aromatics to the sepulcher of the Lord, first announced to the world the splendor of the Lord's resurrection. And if the disciples were called Apostles because they were sent by Him to preach the Gospel to every creature; no less was blessed Mary Magdalene destined by the Lord Himself to the Apostles, that she might remove the doubt and incredulity of His resurrection from their hearts. Thee therefore we suppliants beseech, O Lord, that Thou, who didst confer upon her so great a grace of Thy mercy, wouldst deign to be propitiated to us by her merits, so that we who, overwhelmed by the burden of our sins, are not able to obtain pardon, may, by the pious suffrage of her patronage—she who devoutly, nay specially, served Thee in the world, and now, enjoying with the angels the glory of brightness, triumphs in heaven, radiant with her wonted splendor of charity—be stripped of the stain of all our crimes, and by her prayer be led to the supernal fatherland, that we may be made the laurelled partakers of her glory, Thou granting it, who livest, etc.

Here ends the sermon of the venerable Odo, abbot of Fleury and of Cluny, on Blessed Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene, at Marseilles in the Province of Gaul (St.)

BHL Number: 5468, 5483, 5486, 5509

BY J. B. S.

FIRST APPENDIX.

On the relics of St. Mary Magdalene.

There remains still an immense heap of matters, if all the places must be run through in which the sacred relics of St. Mary Magdalene are said to be preserved and honored; Although they are very many in various places, moreover a huge medley of miracles, if I should pursue each one, which have long ago been collected in great number in various printed and manuscript books. Pardon will be given me, that I bring forth only the chief traces of the matters, the very places being indicated where many other things can be found; but the long and verbose histories I have thought must be contracted into fewer, yet so that, the superfluous being cut away, I have by no means passed over the necessary. Nor will the question, so often ventilated, be here moved, whether the miracles wrought in this or that place be sufficient argument for anyone to prove thence the real presence of sacred relics; on which matter we believe our mind is sufficiently explored from things said elsewhere. And so whatever miracles wrought in Provence, in Burgundy, or elsewhere in the world will be indifferent to us, provided our little labor has contributed a little to the glory of the most holy Lover of Jesus, today so illustrious and shining throughout the whole Catholic Church that supports are by no means to be summoned from signs of this kind.

[188] To begin from the relics, it has already been sufficiently demonstrated that the sacred body itself, if not altogether whole, that the chief ones were deposited at Saint-Maximin. at least in its far better part, was deposited at Saint-Maximin; to which can here also look the testimony of Silvester Prierias, praised above, published by Surius, when he thus writes: "When in the year of the Lord 1497, for the sake of devotion, I had visited the cave in which blessed Mary Magdalene did penance, and her sacred relics at Saint-Maximin, there was shown to me several times her sacred and venerable head, very large and wholly stripped everywhere down to the bone, except that part of the forehead which we said the Savior of all had touched. For there the skin, like that as it were of an Ethiopian woman, or of a corpse now long slain, clearly appears, and in the skin two hollows of the extremities of two fingers, of which the one is much more evident and deeper than the other, and under the skin flesh inclining to whiteness. There were shown also, in a glass phial, her hairs, not all, but those which wiped the feet of Christ: and also a glass phial full of earth having a color midway between red and black, which on the Preparation-day blessed Magdalene gathered under the cross, which, as all affirmed to me without hesitation, each year on the Preparation-day, the passion being read through, evidently and clearly boils up, as if there blood were seen to boil. I saw also her arm, large and of a waxen color. But her bones, shut up in a silver chest, I could not see."

[189] What are held at Cologne; Those who strive to compose the suit amicably between the people of Saint-Maximin and of Vézelay are not unwilling to grant to these freely some part of the sacred body: but by what reason at last this can conveniently be reconciled with the history itself, I do not clearly perceive: this today is certain enough, that the Vézelay relics, of whatever kind, did not escape the rage and fury of the Calvinists, so that now there survives nothing or very little there. Another arm of the same most holy Woman Stengel says is preserved at Cologne in the monastery of St. Barbara among the Carthusians, as Brother Erhard Winheim testifies in the Sacrarium of Cologne Agrippina. It helps here to hear also Gelenius when he thus records on the eleventh of the Kalends of August, "of St. Mary Magdalene": "who within Cologne," he says, "has three churches, so that in this she does not yield to Rome." Gelenius continues: "I believe that the holy Fathers recognize just so many persons of the same name mentioned in the Gospel;

namely because perhaps he found several arms." Of these the smaller arm is preserved there in the churches of St. Alban and of the Fathers Carthusians, and the jawbone in that of St. Pantaleon. But if we believe Breventano concerning the antiquity of Pavia, there is shown there the left arm, and that whole with the hand and fingers, with the breast; and likewise of the hairs, etc. Another arm the Sicilians claim for themselves in their Martyrology, where it is thus written on this day: "At Caltabellotta, the translation of the arm of St. Mary Magdalene." But with what faith these subsist, let it be the judgment of others.

[190] At Lutosa in Hainaut, in Bavaria, at Rome, Add now also an arm of the same Saint, which the oft-named Badilo is said to have translated to Lutosa (Leuze) in Belgic Hainaut: but this perhaps will more easily be placed beyond controversy, if it be said that it is the arm of that Saint who at Vézelay was substituted for the Evangelical holy Mary Magdalene. Let us hear Stengel again: "There are religiously venerated also notable particles of her relics in the most celebrated Bavarian monastery of Scheyern of the Order of the holy Father Benedict, where fingers still covered with flesh are seen. On the holy mount of Andechs there are seen a molar tooth of hers, likewise of the jawbone, and part of the girdle, and another not small particle. Likewise of her skull. Likewise at Rome in several churches and elsewhere in many places." Concerning the Roman relics of St. Mary Magdalene, Panciroli, Martinelli, and Piazza must altogether be seen; in the last of whom's Sanctuary there is assigned an arm at St. Anthony's, a foot at Saints Celsus and Julian's, at St. Cecilia's a finger, elsewhere hairs and part of the head; so that it must be confessed that many things intervene in these which, out of abundance of piety, to say it most mildly, are certainly falsely attributed to St. Mary Magdalene the Bethanian.

[191] Thus the things which are handed down by John Mabillon in the second part of his Italian Museum, page 567, from an appendix to the Roman Ordo which he there describes, where certainly the sacred body cannot be. that in the choir of the canons of the Lateran basilica there is an altar of St. Mary Magdalene, in which is hidden her body without the head, by the hands of the lord Pope Honorius the third, who consecrated that altar—cannot but be referred to some Saint of the same name, since if anywhere, certainly in the city of Rome there can be no doubt that our Evangelical one was deposited at Marseilles, on which matter it is most certain that so many supreme Pontiffs bore express testimony, whose long series you have in our Guesnay, in his Breviary embracing the chief heads of the Disquisition, where at the least two and twenty undoubted ones are enumerated up to Urban VIII, no one meanwhile through so many centuries at Rome contradicting, gainsaying, or claiming for itself the body of St. Mary Magdalene, so that there it must certainly be that the most constant tradition of the people of Marseilles prevails over all the rest, so openly expressed in the very Roman Martyrology.

[192] There is in our possession a Volterra manuscript, in which for that church there is assigned a bone of the greater finger, Of others through Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Germany. namely of the thumb, and of the hairs of golden color. In the Offices of Brindisi there is a memory of undetermined relics, as also in the Veronese church of St. George. Sciacca in Sicily has a very great temple dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, Pirri records, tome 2, page 333, in which also a finger of the same Saint is honored: and besides in the same tome he assigns three other fingers, page 620, which he asserts he venerated, and in them flesh and nails, as of a woman then just dead. Others Masini found in Bologna surveyed; others the Neapolitans supply: the people of Ravenna a rib. But if I approach the individual sanctuaries of Italy, there is no doubt that in the chief places I shall find sacred remains of this St. Mary Magdalene or of another, so that I may now pass over Gaul, Spain, and other kingdoms, to shake out whose treasures, what else will it be than to weave an ungrateful recension?

[193] In Neustria there is Le Moustier of the people of Bayeux; a most fresh tongue, as if it had now been drawn from a living person, Manrique found in Catalonia in his Annals at the year 1157, chapter 5. D'Avila, tome 2, page 79, records that a bone of the Saint is preserved at Seville. Saussay produces a shoulder-blade at Orléans; our Colombi some dust at Viviers. In the reliquary of the Escurial I find two fingers marked, translated thither from Cologne with many other sacred remains: but if you hear the Spanish Chronicles, perhaps another, not one Magdalene, came into Spain. See if you can acquiesce in our Ferrandus in the Reliquary Disquisition, pages 148 and 149. Among those omitted in the appendix to the second of January, it has been noted that some relics are recorded from the Prague Martyrology: others Bucelin will give in his great Treasury of relics on this day. But that some conjecture may be made of their number and abundance, it will be enough if from the Belgic Hierogazophylacium of Arnold Rayssius I exhibit some; for if in so small a region of the Christian world so many sacred remains of St. Mary Magdalene are asserted to be deposited, how many are dispersed through the other empires in the whole world it will be easy to understand. Behold in a few words a list of most of the Belgic ones.

[194] At Saint-Omer in the college of the English of the Society of Jesus he says a small bone and hairs of St. Mary Magdalene are kept with great veneration, page 160. Let the Belgic ones serve as a specimen. Likewise many hairs at Differdange, of the dominion of Luxembourg, page 188. A finger of the same at Bruges in the Cathedral church of St. Donatian, page 200. At Flines, not far from Douai, there are relics, page 215, but hairs at Floreffe, page 218. Two little bones are related in the Cathedral church of Tournai, page 314, with hairs and ointment, besides a rib, which page 379 is ascribed to the monastery of St. Nicholas des Prés (today St. Mark's). What is held at Waulsort, page 331, is not explained; but the collegiate church of St. Mary at Valenciennes rejoices in the half of an arm, page 332. The monastery of Olive near Binche in Hainaut is said to possess a tooth, page 388. There is another part, but unnamed, at Brussels, page 396; a forearm in the Charterhouse of Ruremonde on the Meuse, page 454; and of the bones at Salzinnes near Namur, page 459. I read elsewhere that at Liège at St. James's there is shown a jawbone with one tooth, which relics Philip son of the king of Majorca gave. He could have added that in our temple of the Professed House of Antwerp a fairly notable part of a bone has long been wont to be exposed to the veneration of the people. Others I willingly pass over, since I think these abundantly suffice.

[195] Of what kind all these may be. Concerning all these and six hundred other relics under the name of St. Mary Magdalene, let no one ask of me whether I judge them to be true and genuine hers; for that rope of contention we long ago cut, for whom the first rule is, that all relics duly approved must be venerated with religious cult, whether they bear the true name, or perhaps are exposed to the veneration of the people under another's appellation; the second, that such are not therefore the proper relics of a Saint, because in such a place under his invocation miracles are wrought, since St. Gregory long ago warned, book 2 of the Dialogues, in the last chapter, that the Saints there work greater signs where they do not lie by themselves: so that whether all those sacred spoils be of this Magdalene, or of one of the same name, or of any other Saint male or female, it contributes nothing at all to the matter. For we worship God first and primarily in His Saints, who, endowed with a most happy eternity, cannot be agitated by the goads of envy or emulation. If to anyone these few things do not suffice, let him consult what has been said more recently on that argument in tome 6 of June, page 215, where he will find apt solutions to objections of that kind. Now with equal brevity the miracles must be dispatched.

SECOND APPENDIX.

On the miracles.

Which, long ago published, it is enough to indicate, We shall therefore follow the prefixed order and the same method of compendium in strictly reviewing the miracles of our holy Lover, lest by describing longer histories we be said to have laid out wholly useless labor, about to be more of tedium than of delight: and this seemed by far better, because, as I already hinted above, from the abundance or variety of those signs no increment at all of glory need accrue to the most holy Apostle of the Apostles. Nor indeed have we thought that those things must be reprinted which have long ago and more than once been published, especially those which, once handed down by Vincent of Beauvais, book 23, chapter 153, the praised Stengel transcribed from him word for word on page 332 of his little work. Some things likewise Jacobus de Voragine added to his Legend in his famous Lombardic history; but we suppose those well enough known: we shall below more briefly taste those things which are lacking there, from the Utrecht manuscript of St. Salvator and others. Further, the twenty-eighth chapter of Guesnay's Disquisition, into which he heaped his miracles, it will be enough to have named in a few words. Finally we shall give only the synopsis of the Historical Little Book of the most blessed Mary Magdalene of Philip, bishop of Cavaillon. Here the beginning is taken from the more obscure ones.

[197] as those which are also in our Acta. A notable miracle, nay a series of several miracles, the lessons of St. Adjutor, monk of Tiron in Normandy, weave, given by us on the thirtieth of April, as more fully in the Life itself written by Hugh archbishop of Rouen, and recently published in the Thesaurus of anecdotes of Martène and Durand, tome 5, where there are narrated with most certain faith things which otherwise would seem incredible, granted by St. Mary Magdalene to that soldier, first signed with the cross, then at Tiron a most pious monk, which, since they are abundantly set forth in the places already assigned, here to review or describe there was certainly no need. Among the visions of St. Frances of Rome on the ninth of March, page 128, which is the 38th in order, the whole is occupied in those things which St. Mary Magdalene most lovingly communicated with her. Thus concerning the favors of the same Saint conferred upon her clients of Mechlin, and concerning the singular cult exhibited to her by the inhabitants, you have in the prefatory Commentary to the Acts of St. Rumold, first of July, from number 209. To seek others I forbear; this place must be given to the said chapter 28 of Guesnay's Disquisition, from which we shall select only the titles of the paragraphs.

[198] The title of the chapter is, page 177, "She is rendered more celebrated by miracles." There are related those which Guesnay has: §1. Hanged three times by a noose, he is freed from death. §2. Two illustrious men are snatched from the jaws of death. §3. A certain man, having received mortal wounds, is healed. §4. To two blind women sight is restored. §5. A one-eyed man recovers the sight of his other eye. §6. To two deaf men the faculty of hearing is restored. §7. A mute woman is succored, and her tongue is restored to her. §8. A certain man is freed from an incurable disease and a most present danger of death. §9. A foolish woman is healed. §10. Another barren woman conceives and bears. §11. A youth is delivered from the surging waves of boiling lusts. §12. Violators of the religious cult and fame of Magdalene

are divinely punished. He who prefers to read these things described more fully and in order, let him recur to the fount itself; for us it was enough to have briefly indicated these. Many other things the aforesaid Utrecht manuscript supplies, described by the care of Rosweyde under the title, "On the miracles of Blessed Mary Magdalene," of which I shall here subjoin those which are related neither in Vincent of Beauvais, nor in the Lombardic History, nor in Guesnay or others printed, that I know.

[199] The first is that which happened in a priest of Saragossa, wont everywhere to detract from the Saint, likewise from various ancient manuscripts, who, while riding on a horse, was carried off by the raging beast through thickets, rocks, and pits, nor was freed from the immense danger before he had commended himself with his whole heart to the patronage of the Blessed one. Of a certain clerk Stephen of Flanders, converted to better things by the merits of that Saint, Jacobus de Voragine makes mention. There is subjoined another concerning a Breton, most devout toward the Saint, and wont to ask her that she would never permit him to depart from this light without true penitence and confession of his sins. He, having suffered shipwreck, brought to the shore by the aiding right hand of the Saint, wonderfully proclaiming the great deeds of his powerful helper, obtained what he had asked. The fourth, concerning a slain soldier reviving, and concerning the schedule of another's sins, brought in and blotted out by the intercession of the Saint, is also to be seen in Jacobus de Voragine. There follow singular favors and apparitions made to two monks, special worshippers of St. Mary Magdalene, and to another monk, Raynald by name, who from the visitation of the most blessed Virgin Mary, our holy Lover, and St. Elizabeth, greatly advanced in virtue.

[200] The history of the ox-driver of Grenoble, named Peter, several others, compelled by his stepfather to labor on the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, is read also in Vincent and Stengel. The mark of time is added to the following miracle: "About the year of the Lord 1211 at Limoges a certain noble matron dies, and, wrapped in a shroud, is kept: and while the obsequies are prepared, rising from death she says that blessed Mary Magdalene had touched her lips, and that she had resumed her spirit. And on her feast she came to Vézelay with the shroud and many witnesses of her death." As we have now seen a year, which in these things is rare, added, so from the explanation of the place a little clarity accrues: "At Villers, a house of the diocese of Liège, there was a monk," he narrates, "Arnold by name," that one perhaps of whom we treated on the thirtieth of June under the name of Arnulf; "of praiseworthy life, and having great zeal about the discipline of the Order, who, when from excessive abstinence he had so chilled his stomach that he scarcely received any food, nay rejected what he received,… by the touch of the sacred hand of St. Mary Magdalene was so comforted that, rising sound in the morning, he entered the choir, not without the admiration of the brethren."

[201] but compendiously In our Rebdorf manuscript several other signs are collected; that first, which is said to have been done, a great multitude of the people looking on, in the utterly contracted right hand of a woman, which, all beholding,… "appeared extended and rendered whole." What is above narrated of some one slain, and recalled to life by the merits of the Saint, is asserted in this codex to have happened to several. "But a certain man sprung from Aquitaine, while he was returning from the liberation-feast of Vézelay, ran into his enemies, whose brother he had killed… to whom so great fortitude was given that, protected by the heavenly help of his most blessed patroness, he happily avoided their ambushes, weapons, and swords, and led all, prostrate at his feet, penitent, to the church of the most pious Lover. Finally a certain soldier, coming from Normandy… fighting in a certain battle, received a blow on the neck, by the collision of which blow being grievously afflicted, he wholly lost the sight of that eye. But, restored by a vision of the most holy Lover, having conceived a vow, he received his sight, and seeking Vézelay, upon the altar where the most sacred clod of the Handmaid of God rests, he offered a chalice of wondrous beauty of gold and silver, and all these things," says the collector, "the pious relator himself intimated to us."

[202] they are gathered. In this the Marchiennes manuscript is singular, that, like Vincent of Beauvais, it records in the first place an Auvergnian soldier, who, taken in battle and bound with chains, was freed from them, as also another cruelly chained, bound in arms and legs; so that several things of that kind are gathered there: and first indeed concerning some man of Bourges, who, on account of debts consigned to prison by an exactor, and tormented with dire fetters, calling on the name of that Mary the suppliant of Jesus Christ, obtained mercy from the Lord. Another, in the castle of Nocera bound with iron, found himself, by the Saint's aid, loosed divinely without human help; and likewise he presented his former hostile bonds to his liberatress. In a word: if faith is to be given to these writers, an immense multitude of chains, fetters, and iron bonds was hung up at the Saint's altar. The rest it hands down more compendiously in these words: "Very many demoniacs therefore at that time in the same place were most evidently restored to their former health. Mutes also, five and more, affably received the speech they had once lost. Of those with fevers also, and of other various infirmities, so manifold a cure was made at that time, that it cannot be set forth one by one." Nor does it seem worth our while to weave through one by one these and similar things, deduced much more fully in the same Gladbach codex.

[203] There remains the already-mentioned Historical Little Book of the most blessed Mary Magdalene, Thus also the Historical Little Book, whose preface or dedication is this: "To the most reverend Father in Christ the lord Henry de Villars, by the grace of God archbishop of the first holy see of Lyons, primate of the Gauls, his most dear Lord, Philip, by the sole permission of God bishop of Cavaillon, greeting in Him, in whom and through whom is the true remission of sins; and himself wholly, with the present little book, which, most loving Father, with unshaken confidence of speaking, I have woven from another's threads, to be presented to your affections, in praise of that most holy Sinner, your patroness, nay mine, and (to speak more truly) at once ours, insinuating the ardor of her grief and love," etc. The history which in the autograph followed was deservedly passed over by Papebroch, describing the codex, inasmuch as it is wholly apocryphal: then the author impugns that Vézelay translation and mixes in various things, even things omitted, so that to transcribe them would seem altogether superfluous. Finally he wove a most verbose discourse concerning certain singular miracles of the most blessed Lover.

[204] These among those benefits chiefly which were conferred upon himself he commemorates; namely in the city of Genoa in the year 1349: is contracted into few words. where, the wondrous buildings having been surveyed, when he had received himself into a lodging, his own brother-german ran into the nearest peril of death; but he, vowing a vow, recommended him to his beloved Lover, and so his brother was freed from the imminent danger. Another miracle done to the author in the port of Baiae, while carried in a ship and overwhelmed by most grievous storms, the Lover being again invoked, he reached the port safe and whole. Nor is much unlike the third done to the author in the shore called Roman, where again tossed for several days by violent whirlwinds of the waters, by the sole help of his most beloved Patroness, he happily escaped. There is subjoined also another celebrated miracle, by which at Marseilles a certain man, mortally pierced by an arrow in the breast, and for several years having suffered most hard torments, vowed a vow, hoping firmly that he was being preserved by the help of the Beloved… "and behold in the act, when he had promulgated the secrets of his vow, the iron itself, as if by some one's command or impulse, driven forth from within, leaped out, by the powerful hand, as is piously believed, of the unconquered strength of Mary." And with these we impose a coronis on a treatise now long enough.