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The Tradition of The Maries in Provence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

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The frequency of the name Martha in Provence from the eighth century onwards, as well as its rarity elsewhere in the West, is an indirect but significant indication of the cult of the saint who first bore it in those parts. Moreover, two charters of 964 and 967, now in the archives of the Bouches-du-Rhône, mention a terra of St Martha near Tarascon.

It is also alleged that there exist no other traditions concerning these saintly personages (Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary Magdalen, Mary Salome, and Mary the mother of James), and no other church has ever claimed them. This has been contradicted by the original opponent of the tradition, the seventeenth-century scholar Launoy, and more recently by Mgr Duchesne. The latter brought forward a number of texts to show that Mary Magdalen, regarded as distinct from Mary of Bethany, had her tomb in Ephesus in the sixth century, and that Lazarus, whom certain traditions also connect with Ephesus, had a tomb in Lamaca, then called Citium, in Cyprus, in the ninth century, and that in 899 his body and that of Mary Magdalen were transferred to Constantinople by Leo VI.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1951 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1

The first part of Professor Girdlestone's article appeared in the September issue of Blackfriahs.

References

1 The first part of Professor Girdlestone's article appeared in the September issue of Blackfriahs.

2 The material is really a very fine grained marble which has the appearance of alabaster.

3 Faillon, I, 434 (a).

4 Faillon, II, 801–802, nos. 80–82.

5 Faillon, II, 803–806, nos. 85 & 86.

6 Faillon, II, 802.

7 Leopold Delislc: Notice sur les mamtscrits de Bernard Cui, quoted by Escudier, 79‐