There is a difference of opinion in Eastern and Western tradition regarding St Mary Magdalene. In the writings of St Gregory the Great and the Latin tradition more generally, the Magdalene is a major figure in the New Testament, the “apostle of the apostles” and, according to St Catherine of Sienna, the greatest saint after Our Lady. In the East, the texts held by Western fathers to refer to St Mary Magdalene are divided up between four different women. The Eastern tradition holds that the woman who stood at the foot of the Cross and was then the first witness to the Resurrection is a different woman to the sister of Lazarus who anointed Jesus on the Saturday before Holy Week. The East holds that the woman who anointed Jesus in Galilee in Luke 7:37–50 is not the same woman as Mary the sister of Lazarus or the woman recorded in Mark 14:3–9 and Matthew 26:6–13. Thus, for example, St John Chrysostom arrives at four different women. This is because he believes, quite rightly, in the inerrancy of Scripture, and takes Mark 14 and Matthew 26 to be stating that the anointing they describe occurred two days before Passover (Spy Wednesday). As John 12:1–8 explicitly says the anointing by Mary (the sister of Lazarus) took place six days before Passover, he assumes it must be a different event. But in fact, Matthew and Mark never say that their anointing took place two days before Passover. They say rather that Judas’s betrayal of the Lord took place then, and then they describe the event which triggered it. So that gets us down from four to three…