Maria Cleophae

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Maria Kleophae with her husband Alphäus and their children Jakobus the Younger , Joseph, Simon Zelotes and Judas Thaddäus , Altar of the Holy Tribe, Langenzenn (Bavaria)
Maria Kleophae - Venice

Saint Mary of Cleophas or Mary of Klopas (also Maria Jakobäa ) is mentioned in the New Testament as a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth .

Biblical tradition

The Greek text leaves open whether it is the daughter, wife or even mother of Cleophas, in the Christian tradition she is consistently regarded as Cleophas's wife. By Richard Bauckham Cleophas is with Cleopas equated that a relative of Jesus (perhaps a brother of St. Joseph?) And later a leading figure of the Jerusalem church was.

In John's Gospel ( Jn 19,25  EU ) Mary of Clopas is mentioned as one of the women under the cross: "Near the cross of Jesus were his mother and sister were his mother, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene." Because of Sentence structure is seen by some as the sister of the mother of Jesus , while others consider it rather unlikely that two sisters have the same name. But she could also have been a sister-in-law, since "sister" does not necessarily have to refer to a biological sister in the biblical context.

In the parallel passage in Matthew ( Mt 27.56  EU ) a "Mary ... mother of James and Joseph" is mentioned among the women on the cross, in Luke among the women at the grave a "Mary ... mother of James" ( Lk 24, 10  EU ), both of which are usually equated with Mary of Cleophas. The son named James is also known in the Bible as James the Little , about whom nothing further is known (unless he is identified with James the Younger, the son of Alphaeus). The “other Mary” ( Mt 27.61  EU ) is also regularly identified with the Mary of Cleophas.

However, it is also conceivable that Cleophas and his wife were the parents of the two “gentlemen” brothers Simon and Judas; then one could see the “other Mary” as the mother of the other two “master brothers” James and Joses (and married to Alphaeus). In this construction, the master brother James would be equated with the "younger" James ("son of Alphaeus"), which primarily serves to maintain the assumption of a never-lost virginity of the mother of Jesus (other clues for this equation of the various bearers of the name James does not exist).

Maria Jacobea

In the medieval Legenda aurea , Cleophas is identified directly with Alphaeus , the father of James the Younger ( Mt 10.28  EU ), so that his wife Mary is seen as the mother of James the Younger, Simon Zelotes and Judas Thaddäus . This identification is also represented today by individual, mostly Catholic, interpreters who, due to the similarity of the names, assume the same or alternate names for one and the same person, as was more common in the Graecization of Jewish names (a person with the Semitic name Chalpai is assumed ) .

The Three Marys

According to tradition, Maria Cleophae, along with (Maria) Salome of Galilee and her (possibly dark-skinned) servant Sara-la-Kâli , fled the persecution of Christians on a ship from the Holy Land and landed at the place in southern France, which today is called Saintes after them -Maries-de-la-Mer is called.

Memorial days

presentation

It is only shown in the context of the holy clan and in scenes in the life of Jesus . In depictions of the late Middle Ages, the identity between Maria Cleophas and the mother of James is assumed. With or without a husband, she is mostly shown with her children James, son of Alphaeus, Simon Zelotes, Judas Thaddäus and Joses or Barnabas.

music

In Georg Friedrich Handel's oratorio La Resurrezione (first performed in Rome in 1708) the person of Mary of Cleophas is one of the main roles (Italian "Cleofe").

literature

  • Mary of Cleophas . In: Fritz Rienecker: Lexicon for the Bible
  • Legenda aurea : Of Sanct Simon and Judah the apostles
  • Hugh T. Pope: Mary of Cleophas . In: The Catholic Encyclopedia . Volume IX, Robert Appleton Company, New York 1910.
  • Maria des Cleophas (of James) information in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints

Web links

Commons : Maria Kleophae  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Bauckham : Jesus and the Eyewitnesses , Cambridge, 2006, ISBN 978-0-8028-3162-0
  2. ↑ Cf. Ludwig Neidhardt: Die "Brüder Jesu": Did Maria have several children or did she always remain a virgin? In: Theologisches 37 (2007), No. 11/12 (Nov./Dec.), Col. 401. The hypothesis of the same name assumes that the name Chalpai could refer to Alphaeus (with the omission of the non-existent Greek initial ch ) as also to have been graced to Cleophas . The alternation hypothesis assumes the case, which is not uncommon in Palestine, that a person also adopted a similar-sounding Greek name in addition to their Semitic name (then Alphaeus would be the Graecization of Chalpai and Klopas or Cleophas an additional name of the man derived from Cleopatra ).
personal data
SURNAME Maria Cleophae
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mary of Cleophas; Mary of the Clopas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Disciple of Jesus of Nazareth and saint
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC BC or 1st century
DATE OF DEATH 1st century or 2nd century