Mary Magdalene

Witness, legend, and reclaimed apostle · a map

How a witness to the resurrection was merged with a sinner for fourteen centuries, then untangled — and what later readings have made of her since.

How to read it

The stations follow what the Gospels say, what a pope added, what texts outside the Bible say, and what the Church later corrected. Modern “sacred feminine” readings are held as readings, not history; popular claims of marriage or bloodline are named plainly as fiction or speculation.

tap a station to go to it

1 of 5

Witness at the cross

named in all four Gospels

She stayed, and she was first to see.

All four Gospels place Mary Magdalene at the crucifixion, and each names her among the first to find the tomb empty. In John's account, she is the first to see the risen Christ, and the first sent to tell the others.

2 of 5

Gregory's homily, 591

a sermon, not a Gospel

One sermon fused three different women into one.

In a 591 homily, Pope Gregory I identified Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany and with an unnamed “sinful woman” from Luke's Gospel — a reading not found in scripture itself, which shaped her image in the West for centuries.

3 of 5

Texts outside the Bible

the Gospel of Mary and of Philip

Other early texts give her a larger role.

The Gospel of Mary, part of a codex published in 1955, and the Gospel of Philip, found at Nag Hammadi, both give Mary Magdalene a prominent voice among the disciples — texts the mainstream church never accepted as scripture.

4 of 5

The 1969 correction

Roman calendar reform

Rome separated the three women it had joined.

The 1969 reform of the Roman calendar dropped the label “penitent” from her feast and separated Mary Magdalene from Mary of Bethany and the sinful woman of Luke — reversing, in effect, what Gregory's homily had done nearly fourteen centuries before.

5 of 5

Apostle to the apostles

feast raised in 2016

She was raised, at last, to a feast.

In 2016, Pope Francis raised her day from memorial to feast, giving her a rank shared with the apostles and formally naming her, in the Mass itself, “apostle to the apostles” — the one who told them Christ had risen.

What legend joined, scholarship and a pope's decree slowly, separately, took apart.

The four Gospels; Pope Gregory I's homily (591); the Gospel of Mary (Berlin Codex, published 1955); the Gospel of Philip; the 1969 Roman calendar reform; Pope Francis's 2016 decree.