Leaf from a Gradual, with the Initial M ("Monti"): an Angel Bringing Communion to Mary Magdalene

According to the Golden Legend, a compilation of saints’ lives assembled by Jacobus de Voragine in the thirteenth century, Mary Magdalene spent the final thirty years of her life in an isolated cave in southern France, where she lived in solitude while atoning for her sins. Renouncing both food and clothing, Mary Magdalene relied only on her long hair for warmth and subsisted only on the Eucharist that angels brought to her each day. At the bottom left of this gradual leaf, Mary Magdalene emerges from a rocky landscape, her body concealed by long, cascading hair, as an angel serves her communion. The lyrics accompanying this illumination, translated as, “The dew of Hermon makes green the mountains of Zion,” were sung at mass on Mary Magdalene’s July 22 feast day. The angelic communion was appropriate for this liturgical performance, and the emphasis on the Eucharist is shared by many other images in choir books. The book’s anonymous artist was an important illuminator and panel painter in Florence; scholars gave him the nickname Maestro Daddesco (the Daddi-esque Master) because his work relates to the Florentine painter Bernardo Daddi.