Fl. San
Croce.

was still greater when the woman opened her eyes, and stretched out her arms to her husband. Then they offered up thanks, and all returned together to Marseilles, where they fell at the feet of Mary Magdalene, and received baptism. From that time forth, all the people of Marseilles and the surrounding country became Christians."

The picturesque capabilities of this extravagant but beautiful legend will immediately suggest themselves to the fancy: the wild sea shore-the lovely naked infant wandering on the beach-the mother, slumbering the sleep of death, covered with the mysterious drapery - the arrival of the mariners - what opportunity for scenery and grouping, colour and expression! It was popular in the Giotto school, which arose and flourished just about the period when the enthusiasm for Mary Magdalene was at its height; but later painters have avoided it, or rather, it was not sufficiently accredited for a Church legend; and I have met with no example later than the end of the 14th century. The old fresco of Taddeo Gaddi will give some idea of the manner in which the subject was usually treated.

In the foreground is a space representing an island; water flowing round it, the water being indicated by many strange fishes. On the island a woman is extended with her hands crossed upon her bosom; an infant lifts up the mantle, and seems to show her to a man bending over her; the father on his knees with hands joined, looks devoutly up to heaven; four others stand behind expressing astonishment or fixed attention. In the distance is a ship, in which sits a man with a long white beard in red drapery; beside him another in dark drapery: beyond is a view of a port with a lighthouse, intended, I presume, for Marseilles. The story is here told in a sort of Chinese manner as regards the drawing, composition, and perspective; but the figures and heads are expressive and significant.

In the Chapel of the Magdalene at Assisi, the same subject is given with some variation. The bark containing the

pilgrims is guided by an angel, and the infant is seated by the head of the mother, as if watching her.

The life of Mary Magdalene in a series of subjects, mingling the scriptural and legendary incidents, may often be found in the old French and Italian churches, more especially in the chapels dedicated to her: and I should think that among the remains of ancient painting now in course of discovery in our own sacred edifices, they cannot fail to occur. In the mural frescoes, in the altar-pieces, the stained glass, and the sculpture of the 14th and 15th centuries, such a series perpetually presents itself; and, well or ill executed, will in general be found to comprise the following scenes:

1. Her conversion at the feet of the Saviour. 2. Christ entertained in the house of Martha: Mary sits at his feet to hear his words. 3. The raising of Lazarus. 4. Mary Magdalene and her companions embark in a vessel without sails, oars, or rudder. 5. Steered by an angel, they land at Marseilles. 6. Mary Magdalene preaches to the people. 7. The miracle of the Mother and Child. 8. The penance of the Magdalene in a desert cave. 9. She is carried up in the arms of angels. 10. She receives the sacraments from the hands. of an angel or from St. Maximin. 11. She dies, and angels bear her spirit to heaven.

The subjects vary of course in number and in treatment, but with some attention to the foregoing legend, they will easily be understood and discriminated. Such a series was painted by Giotto in the chapel of the Bargello at Florence, (where the portrait of Dante was lately discovered), but they are nearly obliterated; the miracle of the mother and child is however to be distinguished on the left near the entrance: the treatment of the whole has been imitated by Taddeo Gaddi in the Rinuccini Chapel, and by Giovanni da Milano and

In the list of relics exposed on great occasions in the church of the Santa Croce at Rome is mentioned" the stone on which Christ our Redeemer sat when he pardoned the sins of Mary Magdalene."

Fl. Santa
Croce.

Eng. Durelli.

Giottino in the chapel of the Magdalene at Assisi; on the windows of the cathedrals of Chartres and Bourges, and in a series of bas-reliefs round the porch of the Certosa of Pavia, executed in the classical style of the 16th century.

On reviewing generally the infinite variety which has been given to these favourite subjects, the life and penance of the Magdalene, I must end where I began ;-in how few instances has the result been satisfactory to mind or heart, or soul or sense! Many have well represented the particular situation, the appropriate sentiment, the sorrow, the hope, the devotion: but who has given us the character? A noble creature, with strong sympathies, and a strong will, with powerful faculties of every kind, working for good or evil-such a woman Mary Magdalene must have been, even in her humiliation; and the feeble, girlish, commonplace, and even vulgar women who appear to have been usually selected as models by the artists, turned into Magdalenes by throwing up their eyes and letting down their hair, ill represent the enthusiastic convert, or the majestic patroness.

I must not quit the subject of the Magdalene without some allusion to those wild legends which suppose a tender attachment (but of course wholly pure and Platonic) to have existed between her and St. John the Evangelist.' In the enthusiasm which Mary Magdalene excited in the 13th century, no supposition that tended to exalt her was deemed too extravagant; some of her panegyrists go so far as to insist that the marriage at Cana, which our Saviour and his mother honoured by their presence, was the marriage of St. John with the Magdalene; and that Christ repaired to

Bayle, Dict. Hist.; Molanus, lib. iv., de Hist. Sacrar. S. Mag. cap. xx. p. 428.; Thomasium, prefat. 78. The authority usually cited is Abdius, a writer who pretended to have lived in the first century, and whom Bayle styles" the most impudent of legendary impostors."

the wedding-feast on purpose to prevent the accomplishment of the marriage, having destined both to a state of greater perfection. This fable was never accepted by the Church; and among the works of art consecrated to religious purposes, I have never met with any which placed St. John and the Magdalene in particular relation to each other, except when they are seen together at the foot of the cross, or lamenting with the Virgin over the body of the Saviour; but such was the popularity of these extraordinary legends towards the end of the 13th and in the beginning of the 14th century, that I think it possible such may exist, and for want of this key may appear hopelessly enigmatical.

by

In a series of eight subjects which exhibit the life of St. John prefixed to a copy of the Revelations, there is one, which I think admits of no other interpretation. The scene is the interior of a splendid building sustained pillars. St. John is baptizing a beautiful woman, who is sitting in a tub; she has long golden hair; on the outside of the building seven men are endeavouring to see what is going forward; one peeps through the key-hole; one has thrown himself flat on the ground, and has his eye to an aperture; a third, mounted on the shoulders of another, is trying to look in at a window; a fifth, who cannot get near enough, tears his hair in an agony of impatience; and another is bawling into the ear of a deaf and blind comrade, a description of what he has seen the execution is French, of the 14th century; the taste, it will be said, is also French; the figures are drawn with a pen slightly tinted: the design is incorrect; but the vivacity of gesture and expression, though verging on caricature, is so true, and so comically dramatic, and the whole composition so absurd, that it is impossible to look at it without a smile.

MS. Bibliotheque du

Roi, 7013.

14th century

Il Perfetto
Legendario.

ST. MARTHA.

Ital. Santa Marta, Vergine, Albergatrice di Christo. Fr. Sainte Marthe, la Travailleuse. Patroness of Cooks and Housewives.

June 29. A. D. 84.

The

MARTHA has shared in the veneration paid to her sister. important part assigned to her in the history of Mary has already been adverted to; she is always represented as the instrument through whom Mary was converted, the one who led her first to the feet of the Saviour. "Which thing," says the story, "should not be accounted as the least of her merits, seeing that Martha was a chaste and prudent virgin, and the other publicly contemned for her evil life; and, notwithstanding Martha did not despise her, nor reject her as a sister, but wept for her shame, and admonished her gently and with persuasive words; and reminded her of her noble birth, to which she was a disgrace, and that Lazarus, their brother, being a soldier, would certainly get into trouble on her account. So she prevailed, and conducted her sister to the presence of Christ, and afterwards, as it is well known, she lodged and entertained the Saviour in her own house."

According to the Provençal legend, while Mary Magdalene converted the people of Marseilles, Martha preached to the people of Aix and its vicinity. In those days the country was ravaged by a fearful dragon, called the Tarasque, which during the day lay concealed in the river Rhone. Martha overcame this monster by sprinkling him with holy water, and having bound him with her girdle (or, as others say, her garter), the people speedily put an end to him. The scene of this legend is now the city of Tarascon, where there is, or was, a magnificent church, dedicated to St. Martha, and richly endowed by Louis XI.

As Mary Magdalene is the patroness of repentant frailty, so Martha is the especial patroness of female discretion and good