Mary of Cleopas
The Holy Myrrh-bearer Mary, the wife of Cleopas
Myrrhbearer · Righteous · d. 1st century, in peace
Commemorated 23 May — Memory of the holy myrrh-bearer, who reposed in peace, Pascha offset 14
Mary "of Cleopas" is the woman whom St John names at the foot of the Cross — "his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas" (John 19:25) — and whom the Church numbers among the myrrh-bearing women who followed Christ from Galilee, stood by at the Crucifixion, watched the burial, and came with spices to the tomb on the first day of the week to hear from the angel that He was risen. The Orthodox tradition makes her a daughter of Joseph the Betrothed by his first marriage, brought up in the same household as the Virgin and her companion from childhood, and afterwards given in marriage to Joseph's younger brother Cleopas; her son is the hieromartyr Simeon, son of Cleopas, second bishop of Jerusalem. She reposed in peace. Her fixed memory is May 23; her great commemoration is the movable Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers.
The Gospel witness
Everything certain about her stands in four verses. St John, alone of the evangelists, gives the group at the Cross: "there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene" (John 19:25). The Synoptics name women watching "afar off" and then at the tomb, among them a Mary the mother of James and of Joses (Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40, 16:1; Luke 24:10), and the identification of that Mary with the wife of Clopas is ancient, though not unanimous. What is not in dispute is that she belonged to the company of women who had followed Christ from Galilee and ministered to Him of their substance, that she was present at the death and at the burial, and that she was among those who bought spices when the Sabbath was past and went at dawn to anoint the body — and so was among the first human beings to be told, by an angel, that the Lord was risen.
The Church's name for that company is the myrophoroi, the myrrh-bearers, and the name is a title of honour precisely because their errand failed: they came to anoint a corpse and found the tomb empty. Mary of Cleopas belongs to the small number of witnesses on whom the apostolic preaching of the Resurrection rested at its beginning, and the Gospels' willingness to record that the first witnesses were women, whose testimony was worth little in the courts of the time, is one of the oldest arguments for the truthfulness of the record.
The tradition of her family
Beyond the Gospels the Orthodox tradition — transmitted through the Palestinian and Syrian material that also lies behind the notices of the kinsmen of the Lord — gives her a place in the household of Joseph the Betrothed. In this account Joseph, a widower with children of a first marriage, brought his daughter Mary into the house when the Virgin was entrusted to him; the two girls, of an age, grew up together, and the elder Mary loved the younger. Joseph afterwards gave his daughter in marriage to his own younger brother Cleopas (Clopas), and of that marriage was born Simeon, who is counted among the Seventy, was a kinsman of the Lord, became the second bishop of Jerusalem after James the Brother of the Lord, and was crucified in extreme old age under Trajan — his memory is April 27.
The tradition therefore makes her something more than a bystander: a member of the Holy Family by adoption and by marriage, the Theotokos's foster-sister and companion from girlhood, and the mother of a bishop-martyr of Jerusalem. This is also why St John can call her the Virgin's "sister" without meaning a sister by blood — the Greek ἀδελφή covering the relation of the household as well as of birth.
Repose
The synaxarion says simply that she reposed in peace (ἐν εἰρήνῃ τελειοῦται): she is not a martyr, and no passion is transmitted. Nothing is recorded of her later years, of a mission, or of relics, and the honest state of the record is that her cultus rests entirely on her presence at the Cross and at the tomb, and on the family tradition attached to her name.
Feast and commemoration
Her fixed memory is May 23 (church date; New Calendar civil May 23, Old Calendar civil June 5), where the Greek Menaion enters her in the synaxarion of the day immediately after St Michael of Synnada, with the note that she reposed in peace; there are no proper propers, her memory being kept within the office of the day. The Orthodox Church in America keeps the same date.
Her principal commemoration, however, is movable: the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women, the third Sunday of Pascha (14 days after Pascha), on which the whole company of the myrrh-bearers together with Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus is celebrated with a full festal office. That celebration belongs to the paschal cycle and not to any fixed day of the Menaion, and it is recorded here as a movable rule rather than as a date: the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers can fall anywhere from mid-April to late May depending on the year, and it must never be attached to May 23. The fixed May 23 entry is ranked primary in this collection because it is the day the Menaion gives her by name; liturgically the Sunday is by far the greater feast.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 2 (common of the myrrh-bearing women)
Thou didst follow the Lord from Galilee and minister unto Him of thine own substance; thou didst stand by the Cross with the Virgin Mother, and didst come at dawn with sweet spices to the tomb; and hearing the angel's word, O Mary wife of Cleopas, thou wast made a herald of the Resurrection. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Thou who wast reared in the house of Joseph beside the Maiden who bore God, and wast the mother of Simeon the shepherd of Jerusalem: thou didst not forsake thy Master in His Passion, but broughtest myrrh to His tomb; wherefore we call thee blessed among the myrrh-bearers, O Mary.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Mary of Cleopas is almost never painted alone. She appears in two great compositions. In the Crucifixion, she is one of the women supporting the Theotokos at the left of the Cross — a mature woman, veiled in a dark maphorion, her hands raised or clasped in lament. In the icon of the Myrrh-bearing Women at the Tomb she stands with the other myrophoroi before the empty sepulchre and the seated angel, holding the characteristic attribute of the type: a covered vessel of spices, a small lidded jar or flask, carried in both hands or held forward. Where the myrrh-bearers are individually inscribed — in a few Byzantine and Cretan examples and in Russian menologion tiers — she is named Ἡ ἁγία Μαρία τοῦ Κλωπᾶ. Because the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers is a common church dedication, the composition is widespread; the individual figure, reliably inscribed, is rare.
No storable image is held for this entry. A pre-modern candidate exists and was examined and rejected: the woodcut labelled Maria Klopas in the Nuremberg Chronicle (Liber Chronicarum, 1493; Rijksmuseum RP-P-2016-49-76-2, released CC0 and unquestionably out of copyright). It was rejected not on licence grounds but on grounds of fitness and identification: the block shows a fifteenth-century Northern-European matron in a horned linen headdress, its visible inscription is only the word Maria, and it is a Latin humanist book illustration rather than an icon — it would misrepresent the Orthodox iconographic tradition of the saint. An inscribed Byzantine or Russian myrrh-bearer figure is wanted instead.
Disputed questions
How many Marys? The women at the Cross and at the tomb are among the most tangled identification problems in the Gospels, and the tradition has not resolved them uniformly. The main positions to keep distinct:
- Whether Mary the wife of Clopas (John 19:25) is the same as Mary the mother of James and Joses of the Synoptics. The Orthodox synaxaria generally identify them; some Western exegesis separates them.
- Whether Clopas (Κλωπᾶς, John 19:25) is the same man as Cleopas (Κλεόπας, Luke 24:18), the disciple of the road to Emmaus. The Greek forms differ, and the two names have different derivations; the tradition nevertheless identifies them, and the roll of the Seventy Apostles lists "Cleopas, the brother of Joseph the Betrothed." This entry follows the tradition while recording that the identification is an inference. The whole question is set out at length under the Disputed questions of Simeon of Jerusalem.
- Whether she is Joseph's daughter or, as some versions of the Slavonic material have it, simply a kinswoman brought into the household. The Orthodox Church in America's notice and the Slavonic lives make her his daughter by a first wife.
Not to be confused with Mary Magdalene (July 22), with Mary the mother of James, with Mary of Bethany, or with Salome the mother of the sons of Zebedee — all of whom stand in the same company of myrrh-bearers and are separately commemorated.