This lovely 18K gold vermeil medal of Saint Mary Magdalene measures 25mm in diameter and hangs from an 18 inch Italian 18K gold vermeil chain. "Sta MARIA MAGDALENA" is inscribed around the figure of Saint Mary Magdalene with her halo and long hair. The bail is also of 18K gold vermeil.

The reverse of the medal "Sir de la Ste BAUME" is a souvenir de La Sainte-Baume, the Cave in Provence where Mary Magdalene spent the last thirty years of her life in contemplation and prayer.

THE PROVENÇAL TRADITION
After the execution of St. James in Jerusalem (son of Zebedee and Mary Salome), Mary Magdalene, her sister Martha and brother Lazarus were persecuted by the Jews of Jerusalem and imprisoned. The Jews were afraid of the crowd if they were to execute the prisoners so they towed them off the shores of Palestine in a boat without sails or oars or supplies and abandoned them to the open sea. Others in the boat included Mary Jacobe, mother of James and the sister-in-law of the Virgin Mary, Mary Salome, mother of the apostles James and John, Maximin, one of the seventy two disciples of Christ, Cedonius, the blind man who was miraculously healed by Jesus, Marcelle, Martha’s servant, and Sara, maid of the two Marys.

After narrowly escaping death during a storm at sea the boat finally came to shore on the coast of Gaul in a town now called Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in Camargue. Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, Maximin and Cedonius traveled on to Marseille where Mary Magdalene began to preach. They ended up converting the whole of Provence. Lazarus became the first bishop of Marseille. Mary Magdalene then went on to Aix where Maximin had already gone, some twenty miles north of Marseille. Maximin became the first bishop of Aix and Mary Magdalene retreated to a mountain cave on the plain of the Plan d’Aups known as Sainte Baume (47 AD) where she remained alone for the last thirty years of her life in contemplation, prayer and penance. She is said to have been lifted up by the angels seven times each day at the canonical hours and fed heavenly nourishment. The tiny chapel of Saint Pilon on the crest above Sainte Baume was built in memory of Mary Magdalene being raised by angels.

When the time of Mary Magdalene’s death arrived she was carried by angels to the oratory of Maximin, where she received viaticum. She died in Maximin’s arms and her body was laid in an alabaster sarcophagus in an oratory he constructed in the Gallo Roman town of Villa Latta or Tégulata, which after Maximin’s death became St. Maximin.