The gratuitous and unfounded identification of Mary, the sister of Martha, with Mary Magdalene, has led to much injustice, and the beautiful character of the woman who loved to sit at the feet of the Master has been forgotten, in the not altogether wholesome interest in the more sensational characteristics of the penitent sinner. In art the distinction between the two has unfortunately been lost sight of almost entirely. St. Martha is credited with having brought her sister to Christ, and although no aspersion, however slight, has ever been cast upon her own virtue, she is treated as of quite secondary importance in the home at Bethany. The only actual references in the Gospels to Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, are those in St. Luke x. and St. John xi. and xii. The passages in St. Matthew xxvi. and St. Mark xiv., which have led to so much confusion, evidently refer to another woman altogether. As a result of the mistake, nothing is really known about the quiet, thoughtful Mary, no legends have gathered about her memory, and few artists have represented her in the character which really belongs to her. With St. Martha the neglect has been to some extent the same, but from another cause. Though St. John distinctly says that Jesus loved Martha as well as her sister, and bears witness to the great faith she had in the Master, the reproof administered to her by Christ Himself has overshadowed the praise of the disciple, and from the first she was looked upon as a mere foil to her more interesting sister.
Of St. Martha’s life after the Crucifixion nothing is really known ; but according to the old Provencal legend, which identifies Mary the sister of Lazarus with the sinner, when St Mary Magdalene retired to the cave in the mountain, as related below, St. Martha went to Aix, or as it was then called Aquae Sextiae, where she was kindly received, and won many souls to Christ by her preaching. It so happened that when she arrived a horrible amphibious dragon dwelt in the Rhone, whence it sometimes issued to devour the passers-by, and the country people came to St. Martha to implore her aid. So, she went down to the shore of the river and there she found the terrible beast, who had just eaten a man, lashing his tail in fury and emitting a horrible stench. Nothing daunted, St. Martha advanced upon him alone, and as he was about to spring upon her. she threw some holy water over him with one hand, making the sign of the cross with the other. Immediately he became as meek as a lamb, and St. Martha, taking off her girdle, tied it round his neck and led him to the people, who rewarded him for bis submission by killing him with stones and knives. The name of the town of Tarascon is said to have come from this judicial murder, for it signifies terrible beast; but certain historians allude to it before the evolution of the legend. The enemy routed, St. Martha became a power in the land; crowds flocked to hear her preach, and many were the sinners she won to faith and repentance.
It is related that one day when St. Martha was preaching on one side of the Rhone, a young man who was very anxious to bear her, but who lived on the other side of the river, tried to swim across. He reached the middle of the stream safely, but there his strength became exhausted and he sank. Some fishermen dragged him to land in their net, but he was quite dead. They took him, however, to St. Martha and laid him at her feet, telling her bow they had found him, and begging her to recall him to life. ‘If I do,’ was the reply, ‘will you be converted to belief in Him through whom alone I can help you?’ The simple fishermen replied that they would, and in the presence of the crowds who had collected St. Martha ordered the dead man to arise in the name of Christ, and to bear witness to the great things done for him. She was obeyed, for the dead man stood up, and in a loud voice entreated to be baptized. Great was the excitement amongst the bystanders; hundreds came forward and fell on their knees at the feet of St. Martha, crying: ‘Jesus Christ is God, and there is none other God but Him!’
In spite of the immense success which attended her efforts, and the great number of gifts which were showered upon her, St. Martha continued to lead a simple arduous life. She always walked barefoot, and wore the coarsest garments, concealing a hair-cloth shirt which tore her flesh, with a cap woven of camel’s-hair. Her bed was made of vine-tendrils; grass and fruit were her only food, yet she exercised almost princely hospitality. She was the first mendicant of the Holy Catholic Church in France; more than that, she organized the very first nunnery there, for many women joined themselves to her, and to them she gave a rule of life, making them all take a vow of perpetual virginity.
The Knights Hospitallers of the Holy Spirit are said by some to trace back their foundation to St. Martha, although Guy of Montpellier is generally credited with having been the originator of their Order. Moreover, one of their symbols is the so-called Cross of St. Martha, the vertical staff, according to tradition, representing Lazarus, and the two arms his sisters. St. Martha herself is supposed always to have worn such a cross, and in certain very early bas-reliefs, which were unfortunately destroyed in the French Revolution, she was represented with it in her hands. At Tarascon was long preserved the very cross said to have belonged to her; and in the inventory of that church is mentioned ‘une croix de loton qu’on assure que St. Marthe avait quand elle prit la tarasque.’ It is further related in old legends of Tarascon that one day three Bishops, of whom one was St. Maximin of Aix, met in the house of St. Martha and converted it into a church by a solemn consecration. St. Maximin acted as messenger between the sisters when St. Mary Magdalene withdrew to her cave; and St. George of Poy with St. Front of Perigueux used often to visit St Martha and hold services in her church. The last time she saw the latter, she said to him: ‘I know that my end is approaching, and when I am dead your reverence must come and bury me.’ The Bishop promised to do so, and when God called the holy woman to Himself, His Son went to remind St. Front of his duty. ‘In the twinkling of an eye,’ continues the story, ‘the two were in the Church of Tarascon, where the Saint lay upon her bier, and they took their places one at her head, the other at her feet, each with a book in his hand. When the time came to place the body in the tomb, the unexpected mourners quietly set aside those appointed to the task, and themselves reverently laid the sacred remains in their last resting-place. One of those standing by asked Jesus who He was; but He answered never a word, only pointing to the open page of the book He held, on which was written: “The memory of Martha, the hostess of the Lord, shall never die, and no evil tongues shall harm her.”
According to the learned author of ‘Les Petits Bollandistes’ the tomb of St. Martha still exists, though it is no longer visible to the eyes of the faithful, being hidden by what he calls un grand lit de parade, on which St Martha is represented on her death-bed. At the instance of M. Boudon, a cure of the Church of St Martha, a cast was taken some years ago of the bas-reliefs on the tomb, and this cast is preserved in the upper church. Unfortunately, the heads of several of the figures were broken off in 1653, when the old tomb was enclosed in its lit de parade; but the subjects can still be made out, and resemble those on certain antique sarcophagi found at Rome, leaving no room for doubt that the tomb, whether it contains the bones of St. Martha or not, dates from the first century. In any case, many miracles are said to have been performed in the so-called Basilica of St. Martha. King Chris, for instance, was cured of a disease from which he had long suffered, and as a reward he gave to the Saint all the land for a radius of three miles from her tomb, which gift was confirmed by Louis XL, Charles VIII., Henry II., and Charles IX.
In early pictures and bas-reliefs St. Martha is often represented holding in her hand what may be either a broom, a torch, or a holy-water sprinkler; and the symbol is variously interpreted, as signifying, if it be a broom, her active household work; if a sprinkler, the number of conversions she brought about; and if a torch, her vow of virginity. More rarely she is swinging a censer, in allusion to her house having become a church. She often has a hideous dragon at her feet, in memory, of course, of the legend related above; and in many old engravings she is seen in the boat with her brother and sister.
On account of the description of her as being careful and troubled about many things, St. Martha has been chosen as patron by housekeepers of every degree, and is supposed to be ever ready to aid her sisters in their difficulties, for she is appealed to by the hostesses of hostelries and hotels, and also by laundry-maids in trouble with their mistresses. She often has a big bunch of keys at her girdle, or she holds instead of her broom a kitchen-skimmer or ladle, as in an engraving attributed to Albert Ddrer, and in a Henry VIII. Missal in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In chapels dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, St. Martha is often introduced as a pendant to her, wearing, in marked contrast to the gay apparel of Mary, a simple dark dress and a close-fitting cap.
Except in the familiar scene in her own home, when she received the well-known reproof from the Master, and at the Resurrection of her brother, St. Martha rarely appears in pictures of incidents in the life of Christ; but she is often introduced in ‘Entombments,’ notably in one by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in which she shares with her friend, St. Maximin, the honor of being present with the other mourners.
The chief representations of the Raising of Lazarus are mentioned in connection with him, and owing to the unfortunate confusion between Mary Magdalene and Mary the sister of Martha, the greater number of pictures of the scene in the house of the latter give undue prominence to Mary. Notable exceptions are, however, a painting by the little-known artist Jouvenet, originally in St. Martha’s Church at Tarascon, now in the Louvre ; the fresco attributed to Taddeo Gaddi in the Rinuccini Chapel of S. Croce, Florence; ‘Christ in the Home at Bethany,’ by Pietro Paula da Santa, in the Venice Academy; ‘Christ in Martha’s House,’ by Francesco Bassano, in the Pitti Gallery, Florence; and, above all, the beautiful picture by Luini, long attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, now in Paris in the possession of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, with the fresco by Fra Angelico in S. Marco, Florence, in all of which full justice is done to the careful sister. In the Brera Gallery, Milan, are some fine full-length paintings of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus by a pupil or follower of Luini; in a church of Marseilles, where the memory of St. Martha is still held in special honor, is a fine statue of her, with one of St. Lazarus on one side and St. Mary on the other, and her character has been well interpreted by Burne Jones in more than one beautiful stained-glass window.
The fact that except in the account of his Resurrection the name of Lazarus is but once mentioned in the Gospels, and that next to nothing is known of him except that he was the brother of Martha and Mary, has not prevented the growth of many legends respecting him. ‘In recalling Lazarus to life,’ says the Abbe Guerin, ‘Jesus was less anxious to preserve a friend than to secure to Himself a zealous propagator of His sublime teaching.’ The conversion of the newly -elected disciple — for, according to tradition, Lazarus was not a believer in Christ before his four days in the grave — may indeed be called miraculous in the truest sense of the term, and he who had once faced the King of Terrors was not likely to fall away through any of the fears with which ordinary mortals have to contend.
The Jews, it is said, hated Lazarus with a fiercer hatred even than they did the Lord Himself, for he was a living proof of the divinity of the Master, against whom they hardened their hearts afresh at every new miracle. For some unexplained reason, however, the man who had come back from the grave remained uninjured for ten long years after the Crucifixion of the Lord, devoting himself, according to one tradition, to his military duties, for he was an officer in the Roman army; but, according to another, spending all his time teaching the people, laying special stress upon the doctrine of the Resurrection. Both accounts agree, however, in stating that he was suddenly arrested by the Jews, and, being placed in a boat with his sisters and others whose names constantly vary, was cast adrift in the Mediterranean. With the rest of the party, he reached the coast of France in safety, and when his companions dispersed in different directions, he remained at Marseilles, where he won many souls to Christ, but soon fell a victim to the fury of the heathen. He was summoned before the Roman authorities and ordered to sacrifice to the gods. He refused, declaring he had already died once, and was ready to meet death again rather than deny his Lord. He was then subjected to terrible tortures: his flesh was tom with pincers, he was encased in red-hot armor, and an attempt was made to burn him alive, but nothing could harm him, till at last the judge ordered him to be beheaded. As already explained, this was the only lawful way in which condemned criminals could be put to death, and, as usual, no miraculous intervention saved the victim from the sword of the executioner. The body of St. Lazarus was at first buried at Marseilles, but taken later to Autun, where a church was built in his honor in the twelfth century.
When represented as a patron Saint or in devotional pictures St. Lazarus, as a role, appears in Bishop’s robes, for he is said to have been the first Bishop of Marseilles, although he can scarcely have lived long enough there to have attained to that dignity, and it seems possible that the legend may be the result of a confusion between him and another Lazarus, who was certainly Bishop of Marseilles in the fifth century. Sometimes he holds a bier in his hand, but more often that symbol of his resurrection is introduced in the background. He is constantly introduced in chapels dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene in company with St. Martha and St. Marcella, their servant, whilst the great historical event of his life, his recall from the tomb, with the legendary incidents of his work and martyrdom at Marseilles, are the subjects of many pictures.
As the patron Saint of Autun St. Lazarus appears on certain old coins of that city issuing from his tomb at the command of the Savior. In them the tomb is horizontal, and St. Lazarus is sitting up in it; but the Greeks always represented him as standing wrapped in his cerements at the entrance to a sepulchre hewn in the rock, as on a sarcophagus figured in Pare Cahier’s ‘Caracteristiques des Saints,’ and this idea was also carried out in many thirteenth-century stained-glass windows. St. Lazarus, of course, often shares the boat with his sisters, and in some old bas-reliefs at Marseilles bis whole story is told. Seated on the edge of his tomb, he addresses the crowd which had witnessed the miracle; he gives the supper in honor of the Redeemer; arrives at Marseilles, preaches to the people, is consecrated Bishop, and is martyred with the sword.
Of the many representations of the Raising of St. Lazarus, the most beautiful, perhaps, are the fresco by Giotto in the Arena Chapel, Padua, in which the kneeling figures of Saints Martha and Mary are especially fine ; that by Romanino in S. Giovanni Evangelista, at Brescia; the oil painting by Bassano in the Venice Academy; the triptych by Niccolo Fromentino in the Uffizi Gallery, with the ‘Resurrection’ in the center, ‘Martha kneeling to Christ’ on one side, and ‘Mary washing the feet of Jesus’ on the other; the painting on panel by Gentile da Fabriano in the Sacristy of S. Niccolo, at Florence; the various interpretations of the same theme by Rembrandt; and, above all, the large oil-painting by Sebastiano del Piombo, now in the National Gallery, London, painted for Giulio de Medici at the same time as the ‘Transfiguration’ of Raphael, and by some critics considered to excel even that great creation.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).