04 — The Conflation Question
The collection’s source-critical centerpiece: the question of whether Mary Magdalene is one woman or several. The Eastern tradition keeps three distinct figures — Mary Magdalene (out of whom seven demons were cast), the unnamed sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:36–50), and Mary of Bethany the sister of Martha and Lazarus (Luke 10; John 11–12). The Latin West, by contrast, merged all three into a single “penitent Magdalene,” a merger crystallized by Pope Gregory the Great in his Homily 33 on the Gospels (AD 591) and undone only by Rome’s Calendarium Romanum of 1969.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)
The whole later image of Mary Magdalene in Western art and piety — the weeping prostitute with loosed hair and an alabaster jar — rests on a conflation that the Christian East never made. This section, following METHODOLOGY §4, presents both readings with their sources and without polemic: the Gregorian merger and the texts that produced it; the Eastern threefold distinction kept in the liturgical books and the Fathers; and the modern Roman correction. It affirms the Eastern reading — three women, not one — as the better account of the Gospel evidence, while explaining honestly how and why the West read otherwise.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Three Marys | The three figures the West merged: Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2), the sinful woman of Luke 7:36–50, and Mary of Bethany (John 11–12); the Gregorian conflation (Homily 33, AD 591) and the chain of identifications it required; the medieval “penitent Magdalene”; Rome’s 1969 calendar reform distinguishing them; the Eastern non-conflation. |
| The Eastern Tradition | How the Byzantine liturgical books and the Fathers keep the three women apart — Mary Magdalene on July 22, the sinful woman read on Holy Wednesday, Mary and Martha of Bethany on their own days; the absence of “prostitute” or “penitent” from the Eastern Magdalene; the dignity of the Equal-to-the-Apostles preserved by not conflating her. |
See Also
- Mary of Magdala — “seven demons,” not a life of sin
- Apostle to the Apostles — the title the East keeps undimmed by conflation
- The Provençal Legend — the Western cult built on the composite figure
- Reception and Legacy — the long afterlife of the two readings
References
- Gregory the Great. Homily 33 on the Gospels (XL Homiliarum in Evangelia, Hom. 33) [PL 76:1238–1246]. Trans. David Hurst, Forty Gospel Homilies (Cistercian Studies 123). Kalamazoo, 1990.
- Calendarium Romanum. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969. (The 1969 General Roman Calendar reform.)
- Haskins, Susan. Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994. (On the formation and undoing of the composite figure.)