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The story of this window appears to be an amalgamation of a number of different
stories in the Bible. Presumably, the woman in the foreground is intended
to be Mary Magdalen, given the name of the church; she is certainly depicted as
a saint, as she has a halo. The story is principally based on Luke 7:36-50, the verse quoted being
Luke 7:50. In that passage, an un-named "sinful woman" washes Jesus' feet
with her tears and her hair, and then anoints them with perfume from an
alabaster jar (visible bottom right). The same story appears in all four
gospels (see Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9 and John 12:1-8) but only in John 12:3
is the woman named as Mary.
There is another story in Luke 10:38-42 about Martha getting annoyed because she was doing the work while her sister Mary sat at Jesus' feet. This looks like what is illustrated, but in that story there is no mention of washing feet!
There is another issue in that Mary and Martha were the sisters of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead (John 11), but they lived in Bethany (John 11:1), close to Jerusalem. Nowhere is there a link, other than a common assumption, that Mary sister of Lazarus is Mary Magdalen, who came from Magdala (or Migdal) which is a village near Capernaum, beside the Sea of Galilee. (Migdal means "tower", and an old tower is still visible there today.)
The window was installed in memory of Cyrus Legg, who was churchwarden for a number of years in the mid 19th C. It is probable that the detailed face of the gentleman on the left is an accurate representation of Cyrus Legg, as this was a fairly frequent practice then.
This page last updated 1 June 2010