“The Apostle of the Apostles,” Prostitute or Penitent? A Typology of Mary Magdalene in the Homilies of Gregory the Great
“The Apostle of the Apostles,” Prostitute or Penitent? A Typology of Mary Magdalene in the Homilies of Gregory the Great

Summary/Abstract: Mary Magdalene, who is mentioned on the pages of the Gospels twelve times, is regarded asone of the most famous and stirring strong emotions women of the New Testament. In some religiouscircles to this day, one can still hear claims that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute. Others argue thatMagdalene is the “Apostle of the Apostles” (Apostola Apostolorum) because she was the first person tobear witness to the risen Lord (e.g. Hippolytus of Rome, Jerome of Stridon). Pope Gregory the Great, onthe other hand, combined three evangelical women into one figure in his two homilies: the namelesssinful woman (cf. Luke 7:37), Mary Magdalene (cf. Luke 8:2), and Mary mentioned in John 20:11 – intoa single figure. Thus, Mary of Magdala was regarded as a prostitute. Gregory the Great’s theory becameprevalent in Western Christianity over the next fifteen centuries. This paper aims to analyse homiliesXXV and XXXIII by Gregory the Great and attempt to address the question of whether, for the pope-commentator, Mary Magdalene is exclusively and mainly a symbol of the “convert prostitute?” Thispaper adopted the philological method. It concludes that perhaps the pope himself would have beenastonished that for so many centuries, the most enduring legacy of his two aforementioned homilies isthe image of Magdalene as a “convert prostitute” rather than the moral teaching he wanted to convey.After all, the commentator also juxtaposed Magdalene with the Shulamite from the Song of Songs, Eve,Simon the Pharisee, Peter, Zacchaeus and Dismas, and saw in her a “type” of a Christian of every era.

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