Magdalene

“ You and Magdalene must enter the garden while it is twilight, and Magdalene do not fail to show her the baby birds in the lilac bushes. You, John, however much you wish, cannot go with them, for I have a duty for you. While I light the fire for hot cakes and honey you must run down to Capernaum and bring Jesus, his mother and all the family up here to dine, and stop with us until morning. Ruth will sleep with Magdalene, her mother with me and Jesus on the couch. We have heaps of rugs so others can lie down where they please. ”

“ VERUS: (Clasping her more closely.) To be one alone, Magdalene, in a happier land, where everything encourages happiness, smiles upon lovers and blesses beauty. . . .
MARY MAGDALENE: (Bursting into silent, convulsive sobs on Verus' breasts.) I love you. ... I know it. . . .
VERUS: Come, I know these tears that well at the same moment from our two hearts in our one joy. . . . But here, between the columns of the vestibule, come the greatest ornaments of that beautiful Rome which we shall soon astonish with our love. . . . I am right: it is our good Silanus, accompanied by the faithful Appius ”

“ Salvator once more inspected Antonio's pictures, and stopped before one representing a "Magdalene at the Saviour's feet," which he especially praised.
"In this Magdalene," he said, "you have deviated from the usual mode of representation. Your Magdalene is not a thoughtful virgin, but a lovely artless child rather, and yet she is such a marvellous child that hardly anybody else but Guido could have painted her. There is a unique charm in her dainty figure; you must have painted with inspiration; and, if I mistake not, the original of this Magdalene is alive and to be found in Rome. ”

“ The Magdalene is no longer a shadowy ideal with a somewhat buxom body, scantily draped, with indefinite hair and with the lifeless beauty that the old masters paint. Nor is she quite the woman of the scriptures who is presented to one's mind without that quality which is called local coloring, and with too much of the quality that is ever present with the women in the scriptures—a something between uncleanness and final complete redemption. ”

“ The scene is a smiling and varied landscape; in the centre Mary Magdalene, with the anticipative glory round her head, is seen dancing along to the sound of a flute and tabor, while a man in a rich dress leads her by the hand: several groups of men and women are diverting themselves in the foreground; in the background, Mary Magdalene, with a number of gay companions, is chasing the stag; she is mounted on horseback, and has again the glory round her head: far in the distance she is seen borne upwards by the angels. This singular and suggestive composition is dated 1519. ”

“ Mother and John listened motionlessly, while Magdalene bit her lip nervously, trying to form an inquiry which would open the sealed door of the tomb.
"Can the dead communicate with the living?"
"No, Mary."
"From whence came Moses and Elias?"
"From the abode of the living."
Mary Magdalene's voice changed to milder tones as she sympathetically continued: "Oh, can you not ease my aching heart? This burden is greater than I can bear. I do not understand you. I volunteered when in Galilee to follow you, but as we near Jerusalem my heart fails me. Is this the expression of God's love to me? ”

“ She had joined with her nuns in the penitential psalms and litany, and she then lay in a trance for her last fourteen hours in the posture in which the blessed Magdalene is commonly drawn by painters, holding a crucifix firmly in her hands, so that the nuns could not remove it till after her death. They all noticed her lips moving and a glow of heavenly hope on her face. Her body was so sacred that parts of it were dispersed throughout the Christian world. ”

“ I shall give the legend of the Magdalene here as it was accepted by the people, and embodied by the arts, of the middle ages, setting aside those Eastern traditions which represent the Mary of Bethany and the Magdalene as distinct personages, and place the death and burial-place of Mary Magdalene at Ephesus. Our business is with the Western legend, which has been the authority for Western Art. ”

“ The woman who, under the name of Mary Magdalene,—whether that name be rightfully or wrongfully bestowed,—stands before us, sanctified in the imagination and in the faith of the people in her combined character of Sinner and of Saint, as the first-fruits of Christian penitence,—is a reality, and not a fiction. Even if we would, we cannot do away with the associations inseparably connected with her name and her image. ”

“ When exhibited to us as the patron saint of repentant sinners, Mary Magdalene is sometimes a thin wasted figure with long dishevelled hair, of a pale golden hue, falling over her shoulders almost to the ground; sometimes a skin or a piece of linen is tied round her loins, but not seldom her sole drapery is her long redundant hair. The most ancient single figure of this character to which I can refer is an old picture in the Byzantine manner, as old perhaps as the thirteenth century, and now in the Academy at Florence. ”

“ Thou sinning harlot, who wert derided of all men and women, till this half-mad Nazarene appeared and made a pastime of the companionship of sinners, because none other would believe on Him."
" 'T is true I was a sinner and a harlot," replied the Magdalene, with downcast eyes and sweet, sad voice. "I was; but there is that in the power of God that can wipe out all sin and set one, with clean feet, afresh along a new path of life, that is all joy, and peace, and faith, and happiness, and love."
"Believest thou this?" asked Rebekah musingly. ”

“ Verus
It is well, stand up.... I do not keep you by force. But I could not have believed that you had come to this.... I have fallen into one of your Jewish traps. Do you see the crowd posted there, under the portico, spying upon its hostages?... I will not have Roman property defiled.... I bear you no grudge, Magdalene. Love, in me, is not extinguished in a moment; and I possess more constancy than woman.... ”

“ When the Magdalene is introduced into pictures of the ‘Incredulity of Thomas,’ it is in allusion to a famous parallel in one of the Fathers, in which it is insisted, ‘that the faith of Mary Magdalene, and the doubts of Thomas, were equally serviceable to the cause of Christ.’
Among the many miracles imputed to the Magdalene, one only has become popular as a subject of Art. ”

“ Meanwhile, for myself, I have two visions of this Mary Magdalene.
One—in one of the acts wherein her eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness—when she sits before a small table and lifts her pathetic, sweet voice with the words, "When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away"; and then she stands and the red hair is equally pathetic and twofold bewitching, and she says again, "When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away." ”

“ Verus (clasping her violently)
Have no fear, Magdalene. Nothing can touch you in these arms which close round you. The madness of this land seems more contagious than its pestilence and more tenacious than its leprosy; but Roman reason does not waver, like the rest, at the first foul breath that issues from a tomb. We will cut this matter short. (To Lazarus) You I will not touch with my sword. It shrinks from corpses, even when they walk and drive the trade which you do. It is for the slaves to show you the road back to the sepulchre.... Where are the slaves?... ”

“ And now Mary Magdalene, knowing nothing of all this, comes slowly back absorbed with her thoughts that the body has been secretly removed. She stands at the open tomb weeping. Then for the first time she stoops down and looks in. She is startled to see two angels left there to explain matters. ”

“ Perchance, seeing a naked, starving soul, He may throw around me a garment of mercy, a mantle of love, and I may yet atone, and worship at His feet. There is a story told that He sheltered Magdalene—and why not me? Most noble priestess, I read thee well enough to know thy great mind, stored with the greater mysteries, is broad enough, high enough, deep enough to let a struggling spirit work out its best destiny. I know thou wilt consent that to Endora be allowed the fullest light she can get to lead on to something better than the cold doom which now awaits her. ”

“ Jesus, rising early on the morning of the first day of the week, appeared HERE to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven demons, 'Mary, touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.' We beseech thee, O Lord God, that we may be helped by the prayers of blessed Mary Magdalene, at whose entreaty thou didst not only raise up her brother who had been four days dead, but didst show thyself after thy resurrection here as the living Lord: who livest and reignest for ever and ever. ”

“ We arrived at Annecy on Magdalene's eve, 1681. On Magdalene's day the Bishop of Geneva performed divine service for us, at the tomb of St. Francis de Sales. There I renewed my spiritual marriage with my Redeemer, as I did every year on this day. There also I felt a sweet remembrance of that saint, with whom our Lord gives me a singular union. I say union, for it appears to me that the soul in God is united with saints, the more so in proportion as they are conformable to Him. It is a union which it pleases God sometimes to revive after death, and awaken in the soul for His own glory. ”

“ All that has come to me in death is the certainty that all this is for right; but I understand it not. I know only that to understand it fully is impossible. I would fain explain away what to me becometh daily more inexplicable, yet more certain. Oh, Magdalene, if thou couldst but travel in the spirit world, as I am doing, thou couldst not but believe. I have seen Jesus, and He hath charged me to bid thee tell His mother that three days hence she come to the house of Martha to see Him raise my body from the grave, where it now lieth; for the glory of the living God will this thing be done. ”

“ The scene of the frail creature pleading for the life of Jesus, together with the environment and condition, was so touching that all gave way to their feelings, even brawny old Judas wiped away the bitter tears with the sleeve of his soiled garment, for all had learned to love Magdalene, the once haughty maid of the West Shore, who, as Peter now expressed it, would far outshine all the angels when she got to Heaven. ”

“ But the beautiful Magdalene of Annibal Caracci has heard the words of mercy; she has [Pg 362] memories which are not of sin only; angelic visions have already come to her in that wild solitude: she is seated at the foot of a tree; she leans her cheek on her right hand, the other rests on a skull; she is in deep contemplation; but her thoughts are not of death: the upward ardent look is full of hope, and faith, and love. The fault of this beautiful little picture lies in the sacrifice of the truth of the situation to the artistic feeling of beauty—the common fault of the school ”

“ But our Lord knows our weakness; he knows the physical faintness which comes from long watching, the obscuration of mind which comes from sorrow, and he is at hand to comfort us in our blind weeping. Mary Magdalene knew him not, because her eyes were full of tears, till his well-known voice called her name. The mourning disciples as they walked to Emmaus knew not that Jesus was walking by them. ”

“ They will not abandon you, Magdalene. The rest depends upon yourself alone. , . . I am good and generous, perhaps, but in my own manner; and we must understand each other. ... So they have arrested him in whom you take so lively an interest, as I told you that they would? . . .
MARY MAGDALENE: They have not only arrested him: all the menials of the Temple, the grooms, the herds, the meanest scullions in the kitchens rushed at him, insulted, flouted and ill-treated him. . . . And, as they were afraid, as they were too cowardly to venture it alone, they made the Roman soldiers help them! ”

“ Nor is it only the popularity of Mary Magdalene as the representative and the patroness of repentant sinners which has multiplied her image through all Christendom. As a subject for painting,
Whether the fair one sinner it or saint it,
it is rich in picturesque capabilities. It combines all that can inspire, [Pg 345] with all that can chasten the fancy; yet, when we review what has been done, how inadequate the result! In no class of subjects have the mistakes of the painters, even the most distinguished, been so conspicuous as in the representation of the penitent Magdalene ”

“ Her love for him was genuine, she was not toying with his heart; she wished, like Mary Magdalene, to sanctify herself in his love. But she was the Magdalene in the first stage. Had Christ been a man, and attainable like this man, what transformations the Penitent's heart must have undergone, ere its fires wrought true purification.
"Herr Freyer," the countess began in a low, eager tone, "you said yesterday that it troubled you when people showed you idolatrous reverence and you felt that you thereby robbed your Master. Can we give aught to any earthly being without giving it to God?" ”

“ I then questioned him again as to whether there had ever been such a family tradition concerning Mary Magdalene as he had related, to which he stoutly maintained there had been, and that Mary Magdalene, the fair Galilean Goddess whose life was interwoven into the family of Jesus of Nazareth, had once been a bright feature in the traditional tree of the Rechabites, but when or by whom it was introduced he did not know. ”