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Noli me tangere, meaning "touch me not" or "don't step on me",[1][2][3] is the Latin version of words spoken, according to John 20:17, by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognized him after his resurrection.
The original Koine Greek phrase, Μή μου ἅπτου (mē mou haptou), is better represented in translation as "cease holding on to me" or "stop clinging to me".[4]
The biblical scene of Mary Magdalene's recognizing Jesus Christ after his resurrection became the subject of a long, widespread and continuous iconographic tradition in Christian art from late antiquity to the present.[5] So Pablo Picasso for example used the painting Noli me tangere by Antonio da Correggio, stored in the Museo del Prado, as an iconographic source for his famous painting La Vie (Cleveland Museum of Art) from the so-called Blue Period.[6]
The words are the motto of Houses Tobin, St. Aubyn, Wormell and Wormald.
The words were also occasionally used to describe a disease known to medieval physicians as a "hidden cancer" or cancer absconditus, as the more the swellings associated with these cancers were handled, the worse they became.[7]
The words were a popular trope in Gregorian chant. The supposed moment in which they were spoken was a popular subject for paintings in cycles of the Life of Christ and as single subjects, for which the phrase is the usual title.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church the Gospel lesson on Noli me tangere is one of the Twelve Matins Gospels read during the All Night Vigil on Sunday mornings.
The expression found its way into culture and literature. According to Solinus, white stags found 300 years after Caesar's death had their collars inscribed with "Noli me tangere, Caesaris sum", meaning "Do not touch me, I am Caesar's". This phrase, in turn, appears in the lyric poem "Whoso list to hunt" by 16th-century poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, inscribed on the collar of a hind who stands for the elusive lover hunted (metaphorically) by the speaker: "There is written, her fair neck round about: / Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am."[8]
Historically, the phrase was used by the Confederate States of America in reference to the Gadsden flag—with its derivation "don't tread on me"[3]—and other representations dating to the American War for Independence.[2] In the United States military, the phrase is the motto of the US Army's oldest infantry regiment, the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), located at Fort Myer, Virginia; the snake symbol can be found in the coat of arms of the 369th Infantry Regiment, known as the Harlem Hellfighters. "Don't tread on me" is also the motto of No. 103 (Bomber) Squadron, Royal Air Force.
In pancreas; the maxim "eat when you can, sleep when you can, don't mess with the pancreas" is commonly found in surgical anecdotes.
Noli me tangere fresco by Fra Angelico
Noli me tangere by Martin Schongauer
Noli Me Tangere, by Fra Bartolomeo c. 1506
Noli me tangere by Titian c.1511-15
Touch Me Not (Noli me tangere) by James Tissot
Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1524.
Appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene after resurrection, Alexander Ivanov, 1835
Mary of Magdala at the empty tomb window at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church. Attributed to the Quaker City Glass Company of Philadelphia, 1912
The traditional site of Noli me tangere in the Chapel of John the Baptist in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
Enclosed Garden, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
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Jesus, Flickr, Thomas the Apostle, Francis of Assisi, Madonna and child