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The face of Maria Magdalena It’s Barbara Hershey’s in The last temptation of Christthat of Monica Bellucci in Passion of Christ or that of Rooney Mara in the Garth Davis film of the same name released two years ago. Even that of Carmen Sevilla in the mythical King of Kings. These are some of the actresses who have given life in cinema to the woman who was a disciple of Jesus Christ and witness of his resurrection, according to the canonical gospels, a religious character of a thousand perceptions, whose image has undergone a transformation of one hundred and eighty degrees throughout history: from prostitute to saint.

The Catholic Church branded her as an adulteress and penitent for centuries: “She whom the evangelist Luke calls the sinful woman is the Mary from whom the seven demons are expelled, and what do those seven demons mean, if not all the vices,” he proclaimed. Pope Gregory the Great in the year 591, pointing out their sins without ambiguity. But since 2016 and at the request of the current pontiff, Francis, it is Saint Mary Magdalene, whose liturgical feast is celebrated on July 22. She has also come to be considered as apostola apostolurum, “the apostle of the apostles”.

This was agreed by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. A recognition that sought to “exalt the importance of this woman who showed great love for Christ and who was so loved by Christ, and to highlight the special mission of this woman, an example and model for every woman in the Church.” The defamation campaign was launched from the Vatican itself and from there an attempt has been made to rebuild her image.

Mary of Magdala, a small town located next to Lake Galilee, currently converted into an archaeological site more than 2,000 years old, is mentioned in biblical texts as a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth and freed from a dark past, which has been associated with her alleged status as a prostitute. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus Christ “was accompanied by the twelve and some women who had been cured of diseases and evil spirits: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had come out (…)”.

In 2018, the researcher Jennifer Ristine, director of the Magdalena Institute (Israel), published a book in which she suggested new hypotheses about the origin of this relevant biblical figure. Based on archaeological findings conducted at Magdala, she concluded that the woman “came from a wealthy Jewish city” and that therefore he could commune with “the sacred inscriptions and verses of the Bible, which mention that he cares for Jesus with his own resources.” In this sense, she would not have been a prostitute but a wealthy woman.

But this negative version would remain rooted until the middle of the 20th century. Some ancient authors associated her with “Miriam Megaddlela” or Miriam with braided hair, as mentioned in the Talmud (2nd century), a title that refers to a woman who arranged hair, that is, someone with a disreputable occupation. It seemed of no use that Mary Magdalene was the discoverer of the open grave of Jesus Christ and the first to see him resurrected with her own eyes.

In other apocryphal gospels it appears Pedrothe man upon whom Christ said he would build the Church, as the great nemesis of Mary Magdalene. “May Mary leave us, because women are not worthy of life,” said the man considered the first pope, according to the Gospel of Thomas. In another text known as the Gospel of Mary, written around the second century, the apostle also rebels against the disciple: “Would Jesus have spoken privately with a woman instead of openly with us? Did he prefer her to us? “.

This harmful image was perpetuated by art history, which found in it a reason for canvases. The Mary Magdalene of Titian she is “a penitent prostitute, a woman with a dark past.” According to the description of this work, exhibited in the Pitti Palace in Florence, the Italian painter, to delve into this idea of ​​a sinful female, “could have used a Venetian courtesan like model, since there were many in the 16th century who, having repented and converted, could use Titian’s famous painting as their own example.” The same meaning given off by the wood sculpture of another Renaissance artist, Donatellocommissioned to decorate the Baptistery of Florence.

In the Baroque, Caravaggio He also painted his own Penitent Magdalene, preserved in the gallery of the Doria Palace, which “represents the sinner who has just denied her past social life, leaving a necklace of pearls and jewels on the floor along with the bottle of ointment, her characteristic attribute.” That object is the one that contained the perfume that the woman poured on Jesus’ head in their first meeting, and from where her reputation as a sinner arises – the Church of the West assures that this Mary, the one from Magdala and the one from Bethany, sister of Lazarus, are the same woman, while the one from the East differentiates them.

Artemisa Gentileschiconsidered the first feminist painter, joined the pictorial movement that saw Mary Magdalene as the ideal model of the search for virtue and renunciation of earthly pleasures: The Conversion of the Magdalene portrays a young woman, with wild hair and wrapped in a yellow dress, next to a mirror engraved with the motto Optimam partem elegit —”you have chosen the best part”—; that is, virtue.

Since she was recovered by a North American feminist movement in the middle of the last century, the figure of Mary Magdalene has attracted the attention of works of fiction. Not only in the cinema, where that latest version of Garth Davis has drawn her as an empowered woman, the apostle of Jesus Christ; but also in literature: in the controversial The Da Vinci Code becomes the wife of Jesus Christ, the initiator of her lineage and, therefore, the Holy Grail. There are also different theories about whether she is the author of the fourth Gospel, that of John, or if she is a character in Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. They are the infinite images of Mary Magdalene, the holy prostitute.

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