Mary Magdalene and Magdala: what the Gospels and the excavations tell us

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All four Gospels call Mary Magdalene by name.¹² She followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, stood by the cross and on Easter morning was the first to see the risen Lord. Here is what the Gospels say about her, why the Church calls her the “apostle of the apostles,” and what archaeologists have found in her hometown of Magdala.

What the Gospels tell us about her

Luke introduces her: Jesus journeys from one town and village to another with the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities, among them “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out” (Lk 8:2). Luke also names Joanna and Susanna, who with many others provided for Jesus and the disciples out of their resources.⁴ Pope Francis puts it simply: before she met Jesus, she had been at the mercy of evil.⁹

She appears again in Jerusalem. With other women she watches the crucifixion from a distance (Mt 27:55–56; Mk 15:40–41); John places her with the mother of Jesus by the cross (Jn 19:25); she also sees where Jesus is laid (Mt 27:61; Mk 15:47).¹ St. John Paul II wrote that in this most arduous test of faith the women proved stronger than the Apostles; John was the only Apostle who remained faithful.¹⁰

The Gospels name her with her hometown twelve times: three times in Matthew, four times in Mark, twice in Luke and three times in John. The NABRE calls her “Mary Magdalene” in the first three Gospels and “Mary of Magdala” in John; in Jn 20:11 and 20:16 she is simply “Mary.”¹¹¹²

Easter morning: the first witness

John tells how Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, “while it was still dark,” saw the stone removed and ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple (Jn 20:1–2).¹¹

Then she stays at the tomb, weeping. She thinks the risen Lord is the gardener and recognizes him only when he calls her by name: “Mary!” She answers “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher. Jesus sends her to his brothers, and she announces to the disciples: “I have seen the Lord” (Jn 20:11–18).¹¹

Matthew, too, tells how Jesus met her and the other Mary (Mt 28:1, 9–10), and the Longer Ending of Mark says that he appeared first to Mary Magdalene (Mk 16:9).¹² This ending (Mk 16:9–20) was defined as canonical by the Council of Trent.¹³ The Catechism notes that Mary Magdalene and the holy women were the first to encounter the Risen One and so “the first messengers of Christ’s Resurrection for the apostles themselves” (CCC 641).⁵

“Apostle of the apostles”: the title and the feast

Because she announced to the apostles what they in turn would proclaim to the whole world, Rabanus Maurus and St. Thomas Aquinas called her apostolorum apostola, the apostle of the apostles.⁷ The German Schott missal traces the title back to St. Hippolytus of Rome in the 3rd century.¹⁴ St. John Paul II took it up in 1988: Mary Magdalene was the first eyewitness of the Risen Christ, and so the first to bear witness to him before the Apostles.¹⁰

By a decree of June 3, 2016, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Congregation for Divine Worship made known the decision of Pope Francis: Saint Mary Magdalene is inscribed in the General Roman Calendar with the rank of a feast rather than a memorial; the day remains July 22.⁶ Published on June 10, 2016, the decree added a proper preface, de apostolorum apostola.¹⁵

Archbishop Arthur Roche, the Congregation’s secretary, explained in an accompanying article that it is right for her celebration to have the same rank as the feasts of the apostles, and recalled Gregory the Great: because a woman offered death to a man in Paradise, a woman announces life to the men from the tomb.⁷

Honored in East and West

The 2016 decree opens by recalling that the Church, in the East and in the West, has always honored Mary Magdalene with the greatest reverence, although in diverse ways.⁶ Ecclesial tradition in the West, especially since Gregory the Great, saw in her also the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Lk 7:36–50) and Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. According to Archbishop Roche, this reading shaped Western church writers, Christian art and liturgical texts.⁷ The Greek Fathers, as a whole, distinguished three women.²

The Bollandists studied the question in detail and prepared the way for the reform of the Roman Calendar, approved by Pope St. Paul VI on February 14, 1969; since then the texts of the Roman Missal, the Liturgy of the Hours and the Martyrology refer to Mary of Magdala.⁷¹⁶ What is certain, Roche writes, is that she belonged to Jesus’ disciples, followed him to the foot of the cross and was, in the garden of the tomb, the first “witness of Divine Mercy,” as Gregory the Great called her.⁷⁶

Magdala: the town of fish

The name “Magdalene” points to Magdala, in Hebrew Migdal, “tower.”¹⁷ The town lies on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee, nearly 4 miles (6 km) north of Tiberias, and today is again called Migdal. In Hellenistic and Roman times it was a thriving town known for processing and salting fish, so ancient sources call it Tarichea, from the Greek tarichos, “salted fish.”³ The Talmud speaks of “Magdala of the Fishes.”¹⁷

Magdala was destroyed in the First Jewish War (66–70) and never rebuilt.³ Christian tradition honored it as Mary Magdalene’s home: a church in her memory is said to have stood here in the 4th century, and in the 10th century pilgrims were shown her church and house.¹⁷ How the fishermen worked is in Fishing on the lake.

What has been found at Magdala since 2009

Fr. Juan Solana of the Legionaries of Christ bought land on the lakeshore in 2004 to build a pilgrim center. When work began in 2009, archaeologists of the Israel Antiquities Authority came upon a first-century town.¹⁸⁸ The Custody of the Holy Land calls the synagogue they uncovered one of the oldest in Galilee, with a valuable floor mosaic³; coins found in it date from A.D. 5 to 63.¹⁹⁸

The best-known find is the Magdala Stone: a limestone block carved on four sides and on top, including a seven-branched menorah. It stood at the center of the synagogue and may have served as a table for reading the Torah.⁸ The Custody reads the relief as a symbolic image of the Temple in Jerusalem.³ According to Crux, it is the first such carving of the menorah found in a synagogue built while the Temple was still standing.²⁰ In 2017 the stone left Israel for the first time, for a joint exhibition of the Vatican Museums and the Jewish Museum of Rome.⁸

• Around the synagogue: houses, paved streets, warehouses, tanks for processing fish and a harbor³, as well as ritual baths.²⁰
• Market and wharf: a market street lined with shops, a large warehouse beside a stone wharf that now stands on dry ground, and villas with mosaic floors.¹⁹
• A second synagogue: found in 2021 less than 650 feet (200 m) away, from the same period; the first time two synagogues have turned up in one Second Temple-era town.²⁰
• The Franciscan dig: the Franciscans excavate their own part of the site; Fr. Stanislao Loffreda, OFM, of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum worked there.²¹²²

Next to the park stands the Duc in Altum church (“launch into the deep,” Lk 5:4); its atrium honors the women of the Gospel, and its lower chapel rests on the first-century harbor market.²³

Our People page sums her up, Magdala is on our map of places, and the episode guide shows where Mary Magdalene appears in The Chosen and which passages lie behind those scenes.

Bible references and short quotations from the New American Bible, Revised Edition. What comes from tradition rather than from the Gospels is marked as such, and archaeologists’ readings as readings.

Frequently asked questions

Where was Mary Magdalene from?

Her surname points to Magdala on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee, nearly 4 miles (6 km) north of Tiberias. The town was known for salting fish and was destroyed in the First Jewish War (66–70).

Why is Mary Magdalene called the apostle of the apostles?

Because she was the first to meet the risen Lord and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” (Jn 20:18). Rabanus Maurus and St. Thomas Aquinas called her so; the German Schott missal traces the title back to St. Hippolytus of Rome.

Is Mary Magdalene the woman in Luke 7?

Luke does not name the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet in the house of a Pharisee (Lk 7:36–50) and introduces Mary Magdalene in Lk 8:2. Western tradition, especially since Gregory the Great, saw one person in them; since the reform of the Roman Calendar, the liturgical texts refer to Mary of Magdala.

When does the Church celebrate Mary Magdalene?

On July 22. Since a decree of June 3, 2016, the day has the rank of a feast in the General Roman Calendar, like the feasts of the apostles, with its own preface.