The Relics at Constantinople

In the Eastern tradition, Mary Magdalene’s body, buried at Ephesus, was translated to Constantinople under the Emperor Leo VI the Wise in 886 and laid in the monastery of St. Lazarus, which Leo had restored. This file sets out the Byzantine account of her relics — the Ephesus burial, the translation of 886, and the later dispersal — and places it within the Orthodox theology of relics, distinguishing it from the rival Western Provençal claim treated in the companion file.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)

The Ephesus Burial

The Eastern account of the relics presupposes the tradition of Mary Magdalene’s later life and repose at Ephesus (see Ephesus and the Theotokos). According to this tradition she died and was buried at Ephesus, the city of the Apostle John’s later ministry, and her tomb there was venerated. The Ephesus burial is the necessary premise of the translation that follows: a body cannot be translated from a place where it was not laid, and the Byzantine sources that record the translation to Constantinople thereby attest the prior tradition of the Ephesus tomb.

The Translation of 886 under Leo VI

The central event in the Eastern history of the relics is their translation from Ephesus to Constantinople. The Byzantine tradition records that the Emperor Leo VI the Wise (reigned 886–912) had the relics of St. Mary Magdalene brought from Ephesus to the imperial city, where they were enshrined in the monastery of St. Lazarus, which Leo had built or restored to receive the relics of Lazarus (the friend of Christ raised at Bethany) and of Mary Magdalene (the Byzantine synaxarial tradition; The Great Synaxaristes, July 22; the notice in the Synaxarion of Constantinople). The translation is conventionally dated to 886, the first year of Leo’s reign, and is commemorated in the Eastern tradition as part of her veneration.

[Disputed: the translation of St. Mary Magdalene's relics from Ephesus to Constantinople is recorded in the Byzantine synaxarial and liturgical tradition and is associated with Leo VI and the monastery of St. Lazarus; the year 886 is the date conventionally given. The precise documentation is the Byzantine hagiographical tradition rather than a contemporary archival record, and details (the exact date, the completeness of the relics) are not independently confirmed. The translation is nonetheless the consistent Eastern tradition and stands against the rival Western claim that her body had been carried to Gaul (see the Provençal legend); the two traditions cannot both be straightforwardly true of the same body, and the Eastern relic-tradition is the older and is bound to the well-attested Ephesian context.]

It is worth noting that Leo VI’s restored monastery of St. Lazarus drew together the relics of two figures of the Bethany–Resurrection cycle — Lazarus, raised from the tomb, and Mary Magdalene, first witness of the empty tomb — a fitting pairing for a church dedicated to the conqueror of death. (That Lazarus’s own relics had earlier been translated from Cyprus to Constantinople by Leo VI is recorded in the same tradition; the church thus became a center of the Resurrection cult.)

The Later History of the Relics

After the translation, portions of Mary Magdalene’s relics were, in the manner of the age, distributed and venerated in various places of the Orthodox world. In the modern period, relics venerated as hers are kept at several monasteries of the Holy Mountain (Athos) — notably a hand venerated at the Monastery of Simonopetra — and in other Orthodox shrines; such relics are received as portions of the saint’s body distributed over the centuries of her cult (the Athonite monastic tradition; treasury inventories of Simonopetra). The Orthodox tradition does not require a single intact body in one place; the dispersal of relics among the faithful is itself an expression of the communion of the saints.

The Theology of Relics

The veneration of Mary Magdalene’s relics rests on the broader Orthodox theology of holy relics, which is itself grounded in the Incarnation and the resurrection of the body. Because the bodies of the saints have been temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19) and will share in the general resurrection, they are honored, and God is pleased to work through them — as the Old Testament already attests when the bones of Elisha raise a dead man (2 Kings 13:21). The Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787) affirmed the veneration of relics together with that of icons, and decreed that no church be consecrated without the relics of saints (Nicaea II, 787; cf. its decree on relics). St. John of Damascus, defending the holy images, likewise defends the honor due to the bodies of the saints, “for through them God works healings” (John of Damascus, On the Divine Images 1.19). The relics of the first witness of the Resurrection hold an honored place within this theology (see Icons and Iconoclasm).

Two Traditions of the Relics

The Eastern relic-tradition stands in tension with the Western Provençal legend, which claims that Mary Magdalene’s body never lay at Ephesus at all but was carried to Gaul and venerated at Vézelay and Saint-Maximin (see The Provençal Legend). The two cannot both be straightforwardly true. The Eastern tradition is the older and is anchored in the well-attested Ephesian context of the Apostle John; the Provençal legend is a medieval growth resting on the conflated “penitent” Magdalene and is not attested before about the ninth–eleventh centuries. A careful account therefore receives the Eastern translation as the primary tradition of the relics, while presenting the Provençal claim, in the companion file, as the later Western development that it is. What both traditions agree upon — and what matters most — is the Church’s conviction that the body of the first witness of the Resurrection is holy and worthy of honor.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version: 1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Kings 13:21.
  • The Synaxarion of Constantinople (Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae), notice for July 22. Ed. H. Delehaye. Brussels, 1902.
  • The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church, July 22. Trans. Holy Apostles Convent. Buena Vista, CO, 2008. (The translation under Leo VI and the monastery of St. Lazarus.)
  • The Second Council of Nicaea (787), decree on the veneration of icons and relics. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 14.
  • John of Damascus. Three Treatises on the Divine Images 1.19. Trans. Andrew Louth, Popular Patristics Series. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003.