The official Church
version is that Mary Magdalene was buried in Ephesus and that in 899 the
Emperor Leo VI had her relics transferred to a monastery in Constantinople.
This has the effect
of keeping Mary Magdalene well away from Western Europe and any theories about
the Sangreal, the bloodline of Jesus. But a strong contender in the burial
probability stakes comes from Provence in France, where there is, as mentioned
before, what amounts to a ‘Mary Magdalene industry’.
It was Gregory of
Tours, chronicler of the Frankish kings in the late 6th century, who recorded the older tradition that Mary
Magdalene died in Ephesus where she had lived for many years with Jesus’s
mother, Mary, and John the Evangelist, thought to have been the author of the
Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John.
This account was,
however, contradicted in a document in Latin (c. 5th to 6th century) which,
referring to an earlier record, claimed that Mary Magdalene had travelled to
Aix-le-Provence with Saint Maximin and had lived there for many years before
she died in Aix at the age of 60.
In keeping with the
mission of Jesus entrusted to Mary Magdalene and the apostles, she and Maximin
had preached the gospel in Gaul, and Maximin had become the first Christian
bishop in Gaul (usually referred to as Bishop Maximus). He placed her embalmed
body in a crypt and had a Basilica built over it to honour and protect it.
The body was said to
have been removed during the Saracen invasions as it was feared it would be
discovered and destroyed. Rumour has it that part of the remains were taken to
the French monastery of Vezelay in Burgundy, the church of which carried Mary
Magdalene’s name.
Years later, a monk
of the Vezelay monastery is reputed to have found a crypt at the Basilica of St
Maximin’s in Provence. Reference to the Magdalene was chiselled into the
stone.
Margaret Starbird
draws attention to a published report that the Vatican sent an Apostolic Nuncio
with six bishops and several priests to celebrate mass at the Basilica of Marie
Madeleine in 1950 to honour the 700-year Jubilee of the discovery of her grave
in Provence. She asks questions we would all like to have answered. What did
the Catholic Church know about Mary Magdalene to induce them to participate in
this event? How long had the Church Fathers known whatever it was that they
seemed to know? And, since they were willing to lend support to the Jubilee,
why were they at the same time continuing to discount the stories that placed
Mary Magdalene in Provence both during her lifetime and after her death?
Certain documents
favouring the Constantinople (Byzantium) account of Mary Magdalene’s burial
place claim that part of her relics were transferred in the 9th century to the
monastery Church of St Lazarus and that, some time after the final Crusade,
were moved to Italy where they were buried beneath the altar of the Lateran
Cathedral in Rome. Other documentation places part of her relics near
Marseilles where, as mentioned, the splendid St Maximum’s Basilica was built
over them.
Then there is the
contention that Mary Magdalene’s remains were buried, along with secret
documents, on Temple Mount in Jerusalem and were found when the city was
conquered during the First Crusade.
Where, then, is Mary
Magdalene buried? Legends, rumours and traditions – both oral and written
– abound. Again, the only honest answer is: we don’t know.
–
Is she buried in
Ephesus in Turkey, as the Church believes… or does it?
–
Was she buried on
Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and were her remains moved to the West when the crusaders
took Jerusalem?
–
Is she buried
under the Basilica of St Maximin?
–
Are some of her
bones hidden in a crypt at Vezelay?
–
Or are her relics
buried in more than one place?
Finally, could it
really be that her bones are buried within the glass pyramid at the Louvre
Museum? Of all possibilities, this is surely the most unlikely.
It would be
understandable had some of her bones been placed in different burial places
after her initial burial in order to ensure that at least some of them survived
being discovered and removed and perhaps even destroyed.
Perhaps this mystery
will also be solved in due course if contemporary documents are ever
discovered.
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