La Madeleine
by Heidi Czerwiec
Saint Mary Magdalene’s emblem is the alabastron, the alabaster vase containing precious myrrh, which in all four Gospels she bears to Jesus’ tomb to embalm his body. For centuries, she was unfairly conflated with two other women who play a part in the Gospels and who also apply perfume to Jesus’ body. The first, an unnamed “woman of the streets” assumed to be a sex worker, appears when Jesus is invited to the home of Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7:36-50. With her, she brings “an exquisite flask filled with expensive perfume.” Kneeling at his feet and weeping, she bathes his feet with her tears – “she wiped them off with her hair and kissed them and poured the perfume on them.”
The second is Mary of Bethany, sister to Martha and Lazarus. Described in John 12:1-8, a fortnight before His own death, Jesus shares a table with another resurrected corpse. This Mary also takes “a jar of costly perfume made from the essence of spikenard, and anointed Jesus’ head and feet with it and wiped them with her hair,” so that the “house is filled” with the musky-sweet smell of the oil. This extravagant baptism so touches Jesus that when Judas snarls, “That perfume was worth a fortune. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor,” Jesus rebukes him: “Let her alone. She did it in preparation for my burial.” Jesus knew truly religious experiences often are not ascetic, that there are moments that call for overwhelming the body’s senses, that sometimes only a special perfume can mark, even create, the occasion – that from here on, whenever his apostles caught the smell of spikenard, its sharp bittersweetness would mix with a darker undercurrent that would return them all to that room, filled with warm scent rising from the heat of His head.
In England, her name is pronounced maudlin, as I become when I remember that, in France, she is known as La Madeleine, a name oft-associated with that other, maudlin, smell-event that even today is used to describe a sudden memory: la madeleine de Proust.
Such beauty distilled by death. Remember that embalming and scenting bodies and scenting skins, both human and leather, all give rise to perfumery. Remember that Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of perfumers. After her own death, her sainted relics spread to Greece, Istanbul, and France. Saints’ bodies are known for being incorruptible, often smelling of flowers. Of what does the Magdalene smell? Saint Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume lays claim to her skull; when the tomb was opened, witnesses smelled perfume wafting from the coffin. The preserved left hand of a myrrh-bearing woman, said to be hers, in Simonopetra Monastery in Greece has a pleasant aroma – like medicinal, resinous anise.
Remember too that she is the patron saint of tanners and glove makers and apothecaries, fragrance’s many allies, as well as (unfairly) of converted sex workers and penitent sinners.
Pleased by perfume, He said to her, your sins are all forgiven.
Saint Mary Magdalene’s emblem is the alabastron, the alabaster vase containing precious myrrh, which in all four Gospels she bears to Jesus’ tomb to embalm his body. For centuries, she was unfairly conflated with two other women who play a part in the Gospels and who also apply perfume to Jesus’ body. The first, an unnamed “woman of the streets” assumed to be a sex worker, appears when Jesus is invited to the home of Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7:36-50. With her, she brings “an exquisite flask filled with expensive perfume.” Kneeling at his feet and weeping, she bathes his feet with her tears – “she wiped them off with her hair and kissed them and poured the perfume on them.”
The second is Mary of Bethany, sister to Martha and Lazarus. Described in John 12:1-8, a fortnight before His own death, Jesus shares a table with another resurrected corpse. This Mary also takes “a jar of costly perfume made from the essence of spikenard, and anointed Jesus’ head and feet with it and wiped them with her hair,” so that the “house is filled” with the musky-sweet smell of the oil. This extravagant baptism so touches Jesus that when Judas snarls, “That perfume was worth a fortune. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor,” Jesus rebukes him: “Let her alone. She did it in preparation for my burial.” Jesus knew truly religious experiences often are not ascetic, that there are moments that call for overwhelming the body’s senses, that sometimes only a special perfume can mark, even create, the occasion – that from here on, whenever his apostles caught the smell of spikenard, its sharp bittersweetness would mix with a darker undercurrent that would return them all to that room, filled with warm scent rising from the heat of His head.
In England, her name is pronounced maudlin, as I become when I remember that, in France, she is known as La Madeleine, a name oft-associated with that other, maudlin, smell-event that even today is used to describe a sudden memory: la madeleine de Proust.
Such beauty distilled by death. Remember that embalming and scenting bodies and scenting skins, both human and leather, all give rise to perfumery. Remember that Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of perfumers. After her own death, her sainted relics spread to Greece, Istanbul, and France. Saints’ bodies are known for being incorruptible, often smelling of flowers. Of what does the Magdalene smell? Saint Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume lays claim to her skull; when the tomb was opened, witnesses smelled perfume wafting from the coffin. The preserved left hand of a myrrh-bearing woman, said to be hers, in Simonopetra Monastery in Greece has a pleasant aroma – like medicinal, resinous anise.
Remember too that she is the patron saint of tanners and glove makers and apothecaries, fragrance’s many allies, as well as (unfairly) of converted sex workers and penitent sinners.
Pleased by perfume, He said to her, your sins are all forgiven.