Medieval Catalan Mary Magdalen Narratives

Rosanna Cantavella

With the shift of the location of the cult of Mary Magdalen from Vézélay (Burgundy) to Saint Maximin of Provence, the devotional activity directed towards this saint enjoyed a revival in Occitan lands from 1279 onwards¹. As far as the Crown of Aragon was concerned, this transfer of the centre of pilgrimage must have been received with much enthusiasm, not only because the journey to pray for the saint was now easier because of geographical proximity, but because of a sense of political affinity with Provence, since it had been ruled for a whole century (1112 to 1213) by members of the house of Barcelona, the dynasty reigning in Aragon.

A reference made by Ramon Muntaner in his Crònica to Charles of Salerno as sponsor of the saint's remains discovered at Saint Maximin is hardly surprising. This Provençal count took the initiative in instigating the search. In fact, the future Charles II of Naples claimed that he had acted under divine inspiration (Saxer II, 235). Muntaner echoes the enthusiasm with which the event was received. According to this loyal servant of the house of Barcelona, the Angevin king, in spite of being a political enemy to Aragon, deserved personal respect, for had he not been good and fair, he would not have been privileged with the vision which led him to find Magdalen's body².

So towards 1325 ―that is, when Muntaner began writing his Chronicle―, the discovery at Saint Maximin seems to have been well known by the subjects of the king of Aragon. In any case, Catalan interest in the Magdalen seems to be witnessed already at an earlier date, perhaps before the event of 1279. The early translation of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea, known as Vides de sants rosselloneses, is dated by Joan Corominas at the last quarter of the thirteenth century, despite the fact that it names Vézélay as the place of the saint's remains (Vides, III: 86-87)³. If, as everything seems to indicate, this Catalan translation were executed in the abbey of Sant Miquel de Cuixà, Roussillon (Vides, III: 503), it would seem strange that the Benedictine monks there should have pretended not to be informed about the discovery of 1279, which occurred in a monastery of their own order which was relatively nearby (Saxer, II: 235-36). Certainly the translation closely follows the Legenda aurea, which refers to Vézélay and not to Saint Maximin, but the Roussillon translator of the Legenda also added some fragments, and even whole lives (Vides, III: 503). It is difficult to believe that he would not comment upon a new local development, which was so important, or at very least mention the name, if he already knew about it. It is, in short, difficult to understand why he should retain the reference to Vézélay as the resting place of the saint. The Spanish translation, for example, relates the sequence about how Magdalen's remains were taken out of Aix because of the wishes of the Duke of Burgundy, but it does not name the monastery to which they were taken⁴.

These reflections suggest a very early date for the Vides: before the news from Provence reached Roussillon, possibly before 1280. However the case is not unassailable: we cannot dismiss absolutely the possibility that the Catalan translator might have copied down the name of Vézélay, even knowing that the cult of the Magdalen had been transferred to Saint Maximin.

If, however, we consider it earlier than 1300, the narrative De senta Maria Magdalena, within the Vides de sants rosselloneses, is possibly the earliest extant Catalan text of the biography of the saint. On the other hand it is possible that another hagiographic work may have been written in the same period and in the same linguistic area. The Cantinella de Sancta Maria Magdalena is a poem composed of 23 cobles of five lines with a three-line tornada, which seems to have been sung in a liturgical context. The life of the saint fills the first 18 stanzas, and the remaining ones, such as the tornada, unite prayer to the Magdalen with an exhortation to repentance following her example⁵. This biography deals extensively with the part of her life derived from the Gospel sources, whilst dedicating a short passage to the account of her preaching in Provence and her hermitic retreat. The following shows the precise division of the narrated sequences, classified by cobles:

• I. Repentance of Mary, who «ac del fuec d'enfer paor»⁶.
• II-X. Episode of Luke 7: 36-50:
  • II-IV. Mary washes and anoints Jesus' feet.
  • V. Slander of «Simon lo lebros».
  • VI-IX. Exemplum of the «gran prestador» who forgives two debtors.
  • X. Jesus pardons Mary her «follor», for loving him «entieramen».
• XI. Jesus' burial.
• XII. Announcing the Resurrection to Mary.
• XIII. She proclaims the good news to the apostles.
• XIV-XVII. The Marseilles conversions:
  • XIV. By preaching she converts the pagans of Marseilles.
  • XV. She promises Marseilles' «emperador» that he will have children if he becomes a believer.
  • XVI. That «rey» is happy when realizing that his wife and his son are alive, whom he had previously been believed to be dead.
  • XVII. The King thanks Magdalen and God, and the event converts many more people.
• XVIII. She leads a hermitic life at the Balma for a long time («molt longamen»).

The fragmentary evidence of the work leads us to imagine either a more complete original, and the subsequent loss of some cobles, or else a deliberate attempt to extract, for the parish, only some emblematic sequences⁷. There is particular focus on the pardoning of the Magdalen by Jesus, with insistence on the gratitude which the sinner owes to God for the forgiveness of sins.

The date of the work, as stated previously, is not certain: one indication is given by the fact that, since it follows in broad outline the Legenda aurea, whose approximate date is 1260, the Cantinella must be later. Moreover, in it the Magdalen's remains are located in the township («bailia») of Saint Maximin, confirming a date of composition later than 1279⁸.

The work's geographical provenance seems more uncertain. Is it an example of a Catalan text disseminated in Provence, or of an Occitan text known in Catalonia? Apart from the Paris MS, seemingly the only one extant, there are records of a copy from Barcelona and another one from Marseilles, both now lost⁹. The language in which the text is written does not clarify the question: the very special case of Old Catalan literature, using Provençal as the linguistic register for poetry until the early fifteenth century, is well known¹⁰. There is no evidence to prove Catalan authorship, but given the state of current information, it cannot be rejected out of hand¹¹.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the cult of Mary Magdalen was kept alive in the Crown of Aragon, and it is attested not only by the numerous convents dedicated to the saint, but also by the many iconographic representations which are preserved¹². Hence the fact that literary works dedicated to the biography of the saint are not found until the last quarter of the fifteenth century is conspicuous¹³.

However there is not a complete absence of earlier testimonies. A reportació of a sermon of St. Vincent Ferrer is preserved, preached on the feast day of the saint, patroness of the Dominican order to which this famous Valencian belonged¹⁴. There the life of Magdalen is recounted, based on the Legenda aurea but enhanced with many details. He is the only one among her Catalan biographers to explain the sequence of the expulsion of the seven devils, introducing them as a symbol of the seven deadly sins which she had accumulated (191, 194). His version is also the first Catalan one that depicts the well publicized sinner as simply a frivolous woman, like so many other contemporary ladies of his time. He depicts her as a woman interested primarily in her personal appearance and in courtly amusements ―really inherited from the time of the troubadours' cortezia―; that is, a girl of easy manners whose behavior may be considered more as frivolous, unconsciously encouraging gossip, than as sinful. Only upon listening to one of Jesus' sermons will she realize the seriousness of her behaviour and repent, performing an exemplary act of contrition alone in her room, before going to request the pardon of Jesus at Simon's house (192-93).

Although many other details may deserve emphasis, undoubtedly the sequence dealing with the conversion is the most outstanding. The Valencian friar explains at length, for example, how the beautiful woman begins to listen to the sermon with her head held high, and how gradually it bows as she listens to Jesus' words (192): a clear indication that within her pride dies and humility is born.

Another religious writer, Isabel de Villena (1430-90), narrates in her Vita Christi ―dedicated to the Valencian Franciscan nunnery which she ruled as abbess― the many Gospel passages associated with the character of the Magdalen. As in Ferrer's version, here Magdalen is a frivolous lady, but her bad reputation is presented as based not on fact, but on the uncouth gossip of the lower orders. Her virginity is not questioned¹⁵. Coming from a work which belongs within the tradition of contemplative treatises ―like Ubertino of Casale's Arbor vitae crucifixae or Ludolf of Saxony's Vita Christi―, it is not surprising that in this book the saint appears as the girl in love with Jesus¹⁶. Furthermore, as it is a text, written for a female public, there are full details of Mary Magdalen's falling in love, which, whilst being mystical, is described in terms deriving from the literary tradition of worldly love. The sermon of Ferrer's Jesus was a matter of religious instruction, reflecting on lust as a mortal sin. Here, the preaching of Villena's Christ deals with divine mercy, and his words are used only as a foil for the look with which Jesus conquers the young girl's heart. According to St. Vincent, the Magdalen bent her head on discovering humility, but according to Sister Isabel she cried, hidden behind her fan, upon discovering true love. This is one of the most beautiful love passages of medieval Catalan literature¹⁷.

Two other works remain to be discussed, both by Valencian authors, which deal centrally with the saint's biography as a literary exercise: Joan Roís de Corella's Història de la gloriosa santa Magdalena (later than 1482 according to Riquer III: 267-68, and from now on Història), and Jaume Gassull's Vida de santa Magdalena en cobles (1496, from now on Vida).

Roís de Corella, both theologian and knight, is the most prominent representative of a rhetorical fashion known as valenciana prosa, the most outstanding characteristic of which is the imitation of Latin periodic syntax and the accumulation of metaphors¹⁸. The weeping of that repentant sinner, for example, is described in a way that reminds us of taking off makeup: «començaren a regar les lagrimes de penitençia; les quals destillant, lauaren los vlls de lanima del negre alcofoll de la transitoria miserable bellea»¹⁹.

Corella's version follows Voragine closely, embellishing it with reflections and metaphors but without adding original anecdotes as Ferrer and Villena do. This «mestre en sacra teologia» shows Magdalen's conversion in a way which is closer to the Dominican preacher Ferrer; that is to say, it is attributed to self-analysis, inspired by the Holy Ghost and a confrontation with her sins, and not as a result of love at first sight as in Villena. Furthermore this repentance seems to be the consequence of a practical spiritual cleansing of the mind, which was formerly prevented from working clearly by the ashes of sin²⁰.

Gassull's Vida strikes a different, less artistic note. Written in sixty stanzas of twelve syllable verses, it is lacking sublime metaphors; it seems to have been drafted with a desire to popularize, in the manner of the goigs, songs of the parishioners which would be so successful from the sixteenth century²¹. Its simple rhetorical style lies far from Corella's valenciana prosa. Even so, for a long time it has been routinely repeated that this work was just an imitation of Corella's²². This is not ―or not entirely― so: the whole story is the same because it stems from the same sources, but the importance of each narrative sequence is different. Gassull, for example, gives, in equal proportion, the first half of the cobles to the Gospel material and the second half to the legend of the preaching and hermitic life. Corella, on the other hand, does not care about such symmetry.

Only in one detail, which refers simply to the sequence of conversion, does it seem certain that Gassull followed Corella. Ferrer and Villena developed the version in which the Magdalen hears about Jesus, is curious to know him, and is converted while she listens to him. Both religious writers devote substantial narrative space to explaining this. Instead Corella summarizes that sequence in only one sentence, albeit long:

The complex phraseology does not explain clearly whether Corella follows tradition and he states that apart from knowing Jesus' fame, she listened to him preaching, or else, which seems more probable, she had already been converted by listening to reports of the «profeta». In any case, this sentence permits the second interpretation. If Gassull had read it and understood it as such, this would explain how he developed this version in extenso. Mossèn Jaume's Magdalen repents ―and falls in love― by hearsay, so that when she comes to listen to Jesus, she is already a new woman: change arises before she sees him²³. The Vida can also be connected with Villena's Vita Christi in this same sequence. Like the Franciscan nun, Gassull emphasizes the mystic falling in love assured in the sermon by glances²⁴, although his narration lies far from the climax that Sor Isabel achieves.

Gassull's poem is really a minor work, but it is not lacking in distinctive qualities. In fact, the most noteworthy aspect in the Vida is that its author often uses similes which refer to ordinary daily life, and which may seem ironic. So, it is said that Martha feels for her sister a «santa enveja» (cobla 20: 237-38); pardon of sins is related to monetary, trading or legal terms (6: 59-60; 15: 175-78); in a dirge for the death of the princess of Marseilles, it is remembered that «plora el xiquet desijant la mamella» (38: 452), and so on²⁵. This book was probably commissioned, and it is valued not so much by historians of literature as by bibliophiles²⁶. Its first edition (Valencia, 1505) is illustrated with many high-quality engravings²⁷.

In the survey offered in this study, I have attempted to establish the presence of the legend of the Magdalen in Catalan literature from its beginning until its cultural splendor of the fifteenth century. This also draws attention to the devotion to this saint in the Crown of Aragon. The fact that the mendicant orders, which were very active there from the thirteenth century, and especially in the kingdom of Valencia, honored her particularly cannot be irrelevant: she is the patroness of the Dominicans and she offered a pattern for the contemplative life for Franciscans. It seems very likely that future studies of medieval Catalan religious literature will reveal new evidence of the interest in Mary Magdalen²⁸.