Mary Magdalen - Susan Haskins

Here, at last, the truth is revealed about the birth and development of Christian attitudes to women.

At a time when the Church of England looks likely to split into two camps - one that supports having women as priests and one that does not - this book provides the historical evidence to prove how variable the status of women in the Christian Church has been over the ages, and uses the figure of Mary Magdalen as a key to understanding how attitudes towards women have changed.

The Mary Magdalen figure that the Catholic Church created has been one of the two principal stereotypes of female behaviour alongside her 'opposite', the Virgin Mary, ever since the early Church Fathers decided on her identity (turning her into the epitome of fallen womanhood, merging three Biblical characters into one) in the fifteenth century.

Susan Haskins looks behind the myth and the metaphor to reveal the truth about Mary Magdalen, and about the Church and women.