Mary Magdalene
Women, the Church, and the Great Deception
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Rediscover the crucial roles held by women within the heart of Christianity.
Favourite disciple, influential woman, true believer and follower of Jesus: how do we see Mary Magdalene today? Witness to Jesus' crucifixion and his burial, the first to announce the resurrection, she is without a doubt the most recognizable of the gospels' female figures, a central character in Christianity's foundational story. But centuries of alteration and resizing, of merging several female figures into one, have erased Mary Madgalene's apostolic role and left us with a misrepresentation. They delivered the figure of a quintessential repentant sinner, one in whom sensual beauty and mortification of the body are combined.
When we reflect on the "Magdalene case", delving into the folds of history and the arts, and removing misunderstandings and manipulations, we rediscover the crucial roles women have always held within the heart of Christianity, despite their stories often going untold. Adriana Valerio's engrossing retelling of Magdalene's story, founded as it is in historical fact, is an unmissable opportunity to reclaim such roles in a church that remains largely patriarchal to the present day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Italian scholar Valerio (Maria Montessori) reveals a "great deception" at the heart of Mary Magdalene's legacy in this persuasive analysis. Contending that basic facts of Mary's life—she was a close companion of Jesus and the first to see him after the Resurrection—have been replaced by interpretations rooted in misogyny—she was a sinner and prostitute—Valerio explains how, for centuries, Christian women have sought to claim Mary as more than the "companion" of Christ and an early symbol of female authority. Valerio argues that Mary became a contested figure in the fight for authority in the early church and was revered by Gnostics but sidelined in the writings of St. Paul that eventually shaped the structures of the church. Even as medieval church leaders recognized Mary as an "apostle of the apostles," they held her up as a model of the penitent sinner for women, who they believed needed grace more than men because of Eve's sinfulness. Valerio's grasp on early Christian literature is strong, and it's assumed readers will come to this with a solid grounding in the topic, as there is little in the way of context or discussion. Academics working in Christianity should get much from this well-argued study.
