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The chapel of the courtesan and the quarrel of the Magdalens
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2002 by Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe
Soon thereafter, perhaps as early as the seventh century, began to emerge the legend of Mary Magdalen that eventually produced a cult of great popularity. Lacking entirely any scriptural basis, the legend relates that after Christ's ascension Mary Magdalen could no longer look on any other man, and so she went into the desert, where she stayed alone for thirty years. She lived naked and took no human food or drink, yet she never felt hungry or thirsty. At the canonical hours angels came down from heaven and took her up into the air, where she was nourished by the heavenly joys. The angels then returned her to her cave in the rocks. After thirty years a holy priest came upon her in the desert; he lent her some clothes and conducted her to his church, where he gave her the sacrament. She then died and the priest buried her. (54) It has been recognized since at least the ninth century that the basis for the story of the penitential part of Mary Magdalen's life was the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt. According to the story told in the thirteenth century by Jacobus de Voragine in The Golden Legend, after living as a prostitute for seventeen years in Alexandria, Mary traveled by ship (paid for by selling her body to all the men on board) from Egypt to Palestine where, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, she repented and retreated to the desert. She lived there for many years on three loaves of bread. Eventually her clothes wore out and she lived naked. (55) The conflation of the two stories also served to establish more clearly Mary Magdalen's identity as a former prostitute. (56)
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The image of Mary Magdalen as a penitent prostitute fully emerges in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the founding of the two great mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Canon 21 promulgated by the Fourth Lateran Council was a reformulation of the sacrament of penance. Canon 10 officially sanctioned popular preaching by the mendicant orders. Both decrees were to have an immediate impact on Mary Magdalen's role. (57) Both the Franciscans and the Dominicans made the preaching of penance central to their sermons, and from the outset Mary Magdalen was adopted as the model penitent saint, the paradigm of penance. (58) Judging by the number of lay orders of penitents and companies of disciplinati that were founded at this time, the preaching of penance by the Franciscans and the Dominicans was an immediate success. (59) The sermons gave Mary Magdalen a new significance and heightened interest in her both as a penitent and as a prostitute.
The late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries saw a revival of the medieval preoccupation with the conversion of prostitutes. Not only had the number of prostitutes increased, but also the appearance of the disease of syphilis in the late fifteenth century made them a threat to public health, and interest was renewed in creating institutions to contain them. The founding of the convent of the Convertite della Maddalena in Rome is just one example of many.
