Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor By Susan Haskins (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 413 Part Four entails four studies dealing with the late fourth and early fifth centuries, and is labeled "Theodosius and After." Study XXI on "Religion and Society in the Reign of Theodosius" posits that "pagans in the reign of Theodosius were less powerful than the traditional view held, but more embittered" (p. 168), and analyzes the Carmen contra Paganos and the revolt of Eugenius in this light. Study XXII provides evidence that St. Ambrose and Symmachus were cousins of noble pedigree, and that St. Augustine was not a protégé of the latter. Study XXIII offers a prosopographical analysis of key lines of Prudentius ' Contra Symmacbum and reaches the conclusion that Book I must be dated to the year 384. The final study in this collection is entitled "Aspects of the Background of the City of God" (XXIV) and analyzes the historical and intellectual background to St. Augustine's composition of the Civitas Dei. Professor Barnes sets its genesis in the North Africa of ca. 411—413, when closet pagan intellectuals fleeing from the sack of Rome were attacking the conversion of the empire to Christianity. Addenda at the end of the book update, correct, or defend many of the above-listed studies in the light of subsequent scholarship. Throughout the studies in this volume, one witnesses the acute intellect and the profound knowledge of original sources that Dr. Barnes brings to fourth-century imperial and church history. Scholars may not always accept his interpretations, but his incisive analyses and eloquent arguments command respect. Since some of these studies were originally published in limited editions and not always easily obtainable formats, Variorum provides an excellent service in binding them together in one volume. Scholars of late antiquity and early Christianity will want this book in their private offices and in their university libraries. And one cannot but hope that the studies of Part Four of this collected series indicate that a book or two on the ages of Theodosius and Augustine are in the writing plans of Timothy D. Barnes. Charles M. Odahl Boise State University MaryMagdalen: Myth andMetaphor. By Susan Haskins. (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company. 1994. Pp. xxii, 518. «27.95.) "The Magdalene, like Eve, was brought into existence by the powerful undertow of misogyny in Christianity, which associates women with the dangers and degradation of the flesh. For this reason she became a prominent and beloved saint." Marina Warner wrote those polemical sentences almost twenty years ago in Alone ofAll her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary. Now Susan Haskins, a British art historian, has vigorously taken up Warner's theme, tone, and narrative structure, and similarly has aimed her companion volume for the cult of Mary Magdalen at a popular audience. 414 BOOK REVIEWS To obtain a sense of the ideological framework shaping Susan Haskins' ambitious study of the construction of Saint Mary Magdalen from early Christianity to the present, one need only turn to the final page of the text where this epilogue is found: "On 11 November 1992 the General Synod of the Church of England voted to ordain women as priests" (p. 400). Those hopeful remarks follow this combative statement: "From the early centuries of the Christian era, Mary Magdalen has, like the women she represents, been the scapegoat of the ecclesiastical institution, manipulated, controlled and, above all, misrepresented" (pp. 392-393). Thus it is Haskins' double burden to reveal how history has relentlessly misrepresented Mary Magdalen and to demonstrate how, after such misrepresentations are unmasked, the "real" Mary Magdalen can serve as an appropriate model for the ministry of women in the Church for this and future generations. I have no quarrel with the second part of this enterprise; feminist theologians and biblical scholars such as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Carla Ricci, and Ben Witherington III for some years now have been producing fruitful research demonstrating the importance of women in the ministry ofthe early Church, giving the disciple Mary ofMagdala pride of place in their studies. The problem, as Haskins defines it, is that the faithful disciple, Mary of Magdala, to whom the risen Christ first showed himself and bade announce the good news of...