Mary Magdalene's Place of Res

"The Da Vinci Code" has dredged up a lot of controversy, but one of the lesser debated mysteries is: Where are Mary Magdalene's remains? The debate continues.

Good mysteries can be hard to come by, but Dan Brown's book, "The Da Vinci Code" and its recently released movie of the same name lead us to one of those great mysteries. Now, I'm not talking about whether or not Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married or had a child - everybody's debating that one. The mystery I'm interested in is where exactly are Mary Magdalene's remains?

The second we stepped out of the movie theater this afternoon, my uncle said "Mary Magdalene's remains are not in Paris." He went on to say that her remains are on display in a town whose name he couldn't remember. He and my aunt had visited the town and seen Mary's skull on one of their many trips through France.

Thinking this would be a simple matter of an Internet search, I started looking, and the more I looked the more I found. Mary Magdalene's remains are purported to be in Vezelay, a town in the middle of France. They're also said to have been officially discovered on Sept. 9, 1279, at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, Provence. And according to the Eastern Orthodox Church, her remains have been in Constantinople, now called Istanbul, since 886.

In 1979 Vezelay, Church and Hill were made UNESCO World Heritage sights. But the evidence seems to point toward Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. Pilgrimages to all three sights are common. I wonder if it's possible to ever know for sure.

Of course, the real mystery about Mary Magdalene goes beyond where her remains are kept. And if you're planning to do one of the "Da Vinci Code" tours that are so popular these days, you might want to do a little digging on your own. You may just find the truth to be much more interesting than Dan Brown's fiction.