"The most famous account of the Magdalene (Mary) in France is Jacobus de Voragine's "Golden Legend" (1250). In it, de Voragine, the Dominican Archbishop of Genoa, refers to her as both 'Illuminata' and 'Illuminatrix'---the Illuminated and Illuminator---which is particularly interesting because these are the roles claimed for her throughout the 'forbidden' Gnostic texts. She is portrayed as being both enlightened and the bestower of enlightenment, initiate and initiatrix: there is no suggestion that she was spiritually inferior because she was a woman---quite the reverse.
As is the case with all legends, there are several variations on a central theme, which nevertheless remain remarkably constant. The main story is as follows: shortly after the Crucifixion, Mary Magdalene, together with her siblings Martha and Lazarus, plus several others---their identity varies depending on the version of the story--- travelled by sea to the coast of what is now Provence (France). Among this moveable cast of extras is St Maximin, said to have been one of the seventy-two disciples of Jesus and the legendary first bishop of Provence; Mary Jacobi and Mary Salome, allegedly Jesus' aunts; a black servant girl called Sarah; and Joseph of Arimathea, a rich friend of Jesus who is more often linked to the Glastonbury story. The motive for what was supposedly a hazardous and uncomfortably long journey also depends on which version of the story you read. One is that this group had escaped from the persecution of the early Church by the Jews, and the other main motive given is that they had been deliberately set adrift by their enemies in a rudderless and oarless vessel. It was, of course, literally a miracle that they reached dry land.
The picture painted by the medieval story of the South of France in the days of the Magdalene was of a remote wilderness inhabited only by pagan savages. In fact Provence was a major part of the Roman Empire---a highly civilized area with flourishing Roman, Greek, and even Jewish communities; the Herod family owned estates in the South of France. And far from such a journey's being outlandlishly arduous and off the map, it was a normal route for trading ships and no more difficult than the journey from say, Tyre or Sidon to Rome. If this particular party had come to Provence, they may well have done so voluntarily, without having been forced to flee.
The legends agree that they disembarked at what is now the town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in the Camargue. Once there, the group split up and went their various ways to spread the Gospel. The story goes that the Magdalene preached throughout the region, converting the heathen before becoming a hermit in a cave at Sainte-Baume. Some stories have her living there for the implausible but biblically time-honored period of forty years, spending what must have been very long days repenting of her sins and meditating on Jesus. To add a bit of spice to the story, she is believed to have spent all this time naked except for curiously abundant hair, which clothed her effectively in a way reminiscent of John the Baptist's animal skins. At the end of her life, we are told, she was carried by angels to St Maximin (by then the first bishop of Provence) who gave her the last rites just before she died. Her body was buried at the town named after him.
A pretty tale, but is there any truth in it? For a start, it is extremely unlikely that the Magdalene was a hermit, for however long, in a cave at Sainte-Baume......
In fact, the metamorphosis of the once splendidly voluptuous Magdalene into the gaunt, tearful hermit was a deliberate Christianization of a much more ambivalent story: all the key elements were taken from the legend of the fifth-century St Mary the Egyptian, who was also a prostitute turned hermit and whose penitence in the wilderness of Palestine lasted 47 years.....
Clearly---and in the light of other evidence given later---the 'penitent' part of the Magdalene story is a deliberate invention on the part of the medieval Church to make her more acceptable......"
