The concerted character assassination of Mary Magdalene has puzzled many through the ages. Some believe it was to conceal a marriage between Jesus and the Magdalene but this is actually not the reason for these vicious attacks on her, but actually it is far more complex and is not related to anything happening while Jesus was alive. It is because of what happened to the Magdalene after Jesus died. And it was so damning for the Roman church that taking Luke's description of the Magdalene: 'Mary Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons.' (Luke 8) And from this one sentence the Church decided that Mary Magdalene was, not only a sinner and a prostitute, but in AD 591 Pope Gregory declared the 'seven demons' were in fact the seven deadly sins of pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth and wrath and heaped all these seven sins on to her, on top of prostitution. So this infallible Pope had pronounced Mary Magdalene to be a fat, greedy, lazy, jealous, angry prostitute! You can see that the church showed no restraint when it came to assassinating the character of Mary Magdalene. And all this was really to conceal a truth that was so well known in the South of France that a crusade was launched against the area. It began with an attack on July 22, 1209 on the town of Beziers where the doors of the church of St. Mary Magdalene were broken down and the refugees from the surrounding area were dragged out and slaughtered. This ended in 7,000 deaths including women and children. Arnaud wrote to Pope Innocent III that 20,000 of these Christians were put to sword, regardless of rank, age or sex. These innocent people clearly held Mary Magdalene in high esteem and it cost them their lives. So we can be sure that the church was making a concerted effort not only to destroy the reputation of the Magdalene but to destroy all knowledge of the real story of the most important woman in the Gospels. It is interesting to note that the church in Beziers that was attacked was called Saint Mary Magdalene's but the Magdalene was not made a Saint by the Church of Rome for another seven hundred and fifty years. Furthermore the attack was launched on 22nd July, which was always Mary Magdalene' feast day!