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hairdressers
Mary Magdalene has been the [patron saint] of hairdressers since at least the Middle Ages(1), though the exact point in history where the tradition began is unknown. The connection between Mary Magdalene and hairdressers has two possible origins:
1. Mary Magdalene was believed to have had long [hair], something that became one of her primary attributes in [art] and [legend].
2. The [Talmud] contains a garbled reference to Mary of Nazareth, calling her "megadela neshaya," which apparently means "women's hairdresser."(2) The word "megadela" or "mgadla" appears to have some phonetic connection to the name "Magdalene," and so Mary Magdalene may have thus been connected to hairdressers as early as the third century, when the Talmud was begun.
It has been suggested that, at the time, a "women's hairdresser" was a euphamism for a woman of ill-repute (3), though this isn't well attested in modern scholarship. Still, this link with hairdressers may also represent a clue to tracing Mary Magdalene's early reputation as a [harlot].
Footnotes:
1. Sebastiani, Lilia. Tra/Sfigurazione: Il personaggio evangelico di Maria di Magdala e il mito della peccatrice redenta nella tradizione occidentale. Brescia: Queriniana, 1992. As cited by Jansen, Katherine Ludwig. The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages, p.250. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
2. Sanhedrin 67a and Chagigah 4b of the [Babylonian Talmud].
3. The belief that a women's hairdresser was an indication of character appears to originate in A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica, by John Lightfoot (1602-1675), in the section "Exercitations upon the Gospel of St. Matthew Chapter 27." (Online: http://philologos.org/__eb-jl/matt27.htm)
EM entry history:
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©2005, Lesa Bellevie and Magdalene.org. Please do not reproduce without permission.
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