2023 Ed Conrad Memorial Lecture (in person)

The University of Queensland's School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry invites you to attend the 2023 Ed Conrad Memorial Lecture presented by Emeritus Professor Philip Almond.

 

Mary Magdalene is a key figure in the history of Christianity. After Mary, the mother of Jesus, she remains the most important female saint in her guise as the first witness of the resurrection of Jesus and ‘the apostle to the apostles’.

 

This lecture focuses on the many ‘lives’ of Mary Magdalene as these have been imagined and reimagined within the Christian tradition. It explores the ‘idea’ of the Magdalene in the New Testament, her cult and her relics in the Medieval East and West, and her legacy in the modern West. In so doing, it illuminates the many different Maries: penitent prostitute, demoniac, miracle worker, symbol of the ascetic and the erotic, feminist icon, and most recently the wife and lover of Jesus in The Da Vinci Code. The story of Mary Magdalene leads to some reflections on the relationship between myth and history with the history of religion.