08 — Veneration and Iconography
How the Church keeps the memory of St. Mary Magdalene in feast and image: her principal feast on July 22, her commemoration on the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women (the third Sunday of Pascha), and the synaxis of the myrrh-bearers; and her iconography — the alabaster jar of myrrh, the red egg, and her place among the women at the empty tomb — together with the way the icon refuses the conflated “penitent” image of Western art.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)
The liturgical and iconographic tradition is where the Eastern Mary Magdalene is most clearly seen — and most clearly distinguished from her Western counterpart. The feasts place her at the Resurrection and in the company of the myrrh-bearers; the icons show her dignified and apostolic, bearing myrrh or the red egg, never the dishevelled penitent of the Renaissance. This section sets out the feasts and the hymnography, and reads the iconographic types that carry her identity.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Feasts | July 22 (the principal feast) and the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women in the Pentecostarion; the synaxarion notices; the apolytikion and kontakion; the rank of isapostolos in the calendar; the relation of her feast to the Paschal cycle and the church calendar. |
| The Iconography | The iconographic types: Mary bearing the alabaster jar of myrrh; Mary with the red egg; the myrrh-bearers at the empty tomb (the Myrophores); the “Noli me tangere” / “do not cling to me” scene; the Eastern icon’s refusal of the loosed-hair penitent of Western art; the theology of the icon. |
See Also
- The Myrrh-bearing Women — the synaxis the feast commemorates
- The Red Egg Tradition — the egg in the iconography
- Great Feasts — the Paschal cycle that frames her commemoration
- The Church Calendar — the fixed and movable commemorations
- Icons and Iconoclasm — the theology of the holy image
References
- The Menaion, July 22. (The service to the Holy Myrrh-bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene; the apolytikion and kontakion.)
- The Pentecostarion, the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston, 1990.
- Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982.