After Jesus rose from the dead and left the earth, Mary Magdalene stayed in Jerusalem for sometime but left with her brother Lazarus when the Romans persecuted the church for fun and as entertainment killings during their paganic festivals.
She fled to France, then called Gaul and preached the good news of Christ there.
According to Jewish oral traditions the traditional burial place of Lazarus is in Cyprus, and the traditional burial place of Mary, mother of Christ, is in Ephesus, Turkey.
Ephesus is also the believed site of Mary Magdalene’s burial.
But there are no real proofs to these claims because most of the existing literature at that time has been destroyed or lost in time.
So we are forced to rely on oral traditions and few manuscripts.
One of the earliest documents on the life of Mary Magdalene after the death of Christ is a text in Latin, by an anonymous author.
It dates back to the 5th or 6th century.
What is very interesting is that in 1279, the tomb of Mary Magdalene was believed to have been found and growing from her mouth was an aromatic plant.
Other miraculous signs followed which were recorded at the time!
In 1945 at Nag Hammadi, in southern Egypt, two men came across a sealed ceramic jar.
Inside, they discovered a hoard of ancient papyrus books.
Although they never received as much public attention as the Dead Sea Scrolls, these actually turn out to be much more important for writing the history of early Christianity.
They were a cache of Christian texts!
The Nag Hammadi texts tell us about early Christians.
They were written in Coptic, the language of Early Christian Egypt.
As most ancient Christian texts have been lost, this discovery was exceptional.
The discovery includes The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip and the Acts of Peter.
None of these texts were included in the Bible, because the content didn’t conform to Christian doctrine, and they’re referred to as apocryphal.
They tend to concentrate on things that one doesn’t read about in the Bible.
For example, New Testament gospels report that after the resurrection Jesus spent some time talking with the disciples, but you don’t learn much about what he said.
In the gospels of Nag Hammadi you can read what he said.
Although they’re not Biblical texts, experts still believe that they give us significant insights into Christian history.
In these apocryphal texts we might have genuine traditions about Jesus that for one reason or another didn’t make it into the New Testament.
For the first time in hundreds of years there was a new source of information about Mary Magdalene.
She appears very frequently as one of the prominent disciples of Jesus.
In certain texts where Jesus is in discussion with his disciples, Mary Magdalene asks many informed questions.
Whereas the other disciples at times seem confused, she is the one who understands.
One of the documents discovered at Nag Hammadi is the Gospel of Philip, in which Mary Magdalene is a key figure.
It has been the cause of one of the most controversial claims ever made about her.
During their long burial in the desert, some of the books were attacked by ants.
In this Gospel, the ants made a hole in a very crucial place.
In a Cairo bazaar in 1896, a German scholar happened to come across a curious papyrus book.
Bound in leather and written in Coptic, this was The Gospel of Mary.
Like the books found at Nag Hammadi, the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene is also considered an apocryphal text.
The story it contains begins some time after the resurrection.
The disciples have just had a vision of Jesus.
Jesus has encouraged his disciples to go out and preach his teachings to the world, but they are afraid to do so because he was killed for it, and they say “if they killed him, they are going to kill us too”.
It’s Mary who steps forward and says: don’t be worried, he promised he would be with us to protect us.
It says she turns their hearts toward the good and they begin to discuss the words of the Saviour.
In texts like the Gospel of Philip, Mary was presented as a symbol of wisdom. However in the Gospel of Mary, she is the one in charge, telling the disciples about Jesus’ teachings.
At this point Peter asks Mary to tell them some things that she might have heard, but which the other disciples haven’t.
She says “Yes, I will tell you what has been hidden from you”.
She talks about a vision she had of Jesus and a conversation that she had with him.
As the Gospel tells it, Mary then relates the details of this conversation, which is to do with spiritual development and the soul’s lifelong battle with evil.
At this point controversy arises, and Andrew steps in and says “well, I don’t know what the rest of you think, but these things seem very strange to me, and it seems that she’s telling us teachings that are different from the Saviour.”
Peter then chimes in and he says, “Are we supposed to now all turn around and listen to her? Would Jesus have spoken privately with a woman rather than openly to us? Did he prefer her to us?”
Matthew defends Mary and quells Peter’s attack on her.
In the text, Peter’s problem seems to be that Jesus selected Mary above the other disciples to interpret his teachings.
Peter sees Mary as a rival for the leadership of the group itself.
Most people think of Peter as the rock upon which the church was established.
He is the main or major disciple figure, and Mary Magdalene is a kind of side figure in the cast of characters.
One of the absolutely fascinating things about the Gospel of Mary is it really asks us to rethink that story about Christian history: did all the disciples get it? Did they really understand and preach the truth?
Perhaps the Gospel of Mary was just too radical.
It presents Mary as a teacher and spiritual guide to the other disciples.
She’s not just a disciple; she’s the apostle to the apostles.
A Medieval Text known as The Golden Legend paints Mary Magdalene as a preacher.
For example, it gives one story where Mary Magdalene teaches some pagans about Jesus Christ.
“When blessed Mary Magdalene saw the people gathering at the shrine to offer sacrifice to the idols, she came forward, her manner calm and her face serene, and with well-chosen words called them away from the cult of idols and preached Christ fervidly to them.”
After a few adventures preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Golden Legend claims that she went into solitude for the rest of her life.
“At this time blessed Mary Magdalene, wishing to devote herself to heavenly contemplation, retired to an empty wilderness, and lived unknown for thirty years in a place made ready by the hands of angels.”
According to this account, she died after receiving Holy Communion from a priest friend of hers who lived nearby.
In contrast, The Catholic Encyclopedia relates a few differing stories.
The Greek Church maintains that the saint retired to Ephesus with the Blessed Virgin and there died, that her relics were transferred to Constantinople in 886 and are there preserved.
There is even a tradition that Mary Magdalene went to France.
According to AtlasObscura, “When Mary Magdalene fled the Holy Land, legend says she took refuge in a cave [near the Sainte-Baume mountains in southern France]. This mountaintop cave is now a hidden monastery called The Sanctuary of Mary Magdalene.”
Some of her relics are reportedly located in a church in Aix-en-Provence, France, near where she was a hermit for 30 years.
It is uncertain which of these legends, if any, is true, but whatever the case might have been, Mary Magdalene likely had a privileged place in the early Church for her personal encounter with the risen Lord.
What Happened When Mary Magdalene Fled to France According to Legend?
In Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, a little town in the southeastern region of France, there is a grotto and a medieval basilica that attract thousands of pilgrims each year.
These people believe that the cave, known as La Baume of Mary Magdalene, holds the bones of Mary Magdalene.
According to French tradition, Mary, her brother Lazarus, and Maximin (one of Christ’s seventy-two disciples) fled the Holy Land after the execution of St. James in Jerusalem.
After escaping in a boat without sails or rudders, they landed in France at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
When the three arrived in Marseille Mary began to preach and converted the local people.
For the last thirty years of her life Mary lived in a cave in the Sainte-Baume mountains and was buried in the town of Saint-Maximin.
When Charles II (1254-1309), King of Naples and Count of Provence, heard the legends about the burial place of St. Mary Magdelene in Saint-Maximin, he ordered excavations to locate her relics.
According to this story, Mary’s sarcophagus was located in December of 1279.
Most of her body was in tact, the only elements missing were the mandible (jaw bone) and lower leg bones.
The mandible was located at St. John Lateran in Rome, where it had been venerated, and it was reunited with the rest of the body on April 6, 1295.
Charles the II founded the gothic basilica Ste. Marie-Madeleine in 1295 and the priory at Sainte Baume.
The basilica received the blessing of Boniface VIII, who placed it under the order of the Dominican monks.
Though construction of the church was started in 1295, it wasn’t completed until 1532 because of the devastation caused by The Black Death ( a bubonic plague which occurred in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353.
It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of 75–200 million people.
