Mary, the Blessed Virgin (1st century), mother of Jesus Christ. In both East and West Mary is accounted preeminent among all the saints. The unique privilege of being the mother of one who was, according to Christian belief, both God and Man is at the heart of the special honour paid to Mary, described by Thomas Aquinas as ‘hyperdulia’, i.e. a veneration which exceeds that paid to other saints, but is at the same time infinitely below the adoration (‘latria’) due to God alone, which it would be blasphemous to attribute to any creature.
Of her early life Scripture tells us nothing, but in the Gospels Mary figures most prominently in Christ's infancy narratives of Matt. 1–2 and Luke 1–2. It has often been observed that Luke's account gives the story from Mary's viewpoint, while Matthew's gives more prominence to Joseph. In both, the virginal conception of Christ is clearly, but equivalently stated. During Christ's public life Mary occasionally appears (e.g. at the marriage feast of Cana), but remains habitually in the background. She reappears in John's gospel at the foot of the cross, where the beloved disciple received Christ's injunction to treat her as his mother; thenceforth presumably she lived in his household.
In the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles she was with the Apostles and received the Holy Spirit with them on Whitsunday. But her role was not the active one of teaching and preaching; in the early church, as in Christ's ministry, she remained so much in the background that it is difficult to know where she lived or even where she died. Both Ephesus and Jerusalem claimed to be the place of her death, with the Eastern Fathers generally supporting Jerusalem. From the 7th century or earlier, in both East and West John Damascene, Gregory of Tours, and others clearly formulated the doctrine of her corporal Assumption into Heaven, earlier asserted in some apocryphal writings. Side by side with this development went an increasing emphasis on her power in Heaven.
Meanwhile the significance of Mary's role in the Redemption had become clarified through the Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the early Christian centuries. Justin and Irenaeus had developed the theme of Mary as the New Eve, whose obedience in some ways cancelled the disobedience of Eve; Mary's perpetual virginity was also taught from early centuries and formulated with characteristic energy by Jerome, as by Athanasius before him. But it was especially with the Council of Ephesus (431) that the full implication of Mary's role in the Redemption was formulated, whereby the title Theotokos Deipara, (or Mother of God), of Alexandrian origin, became recognized as orthodox because of the hypostatic union of Divinity and humanity in the single person of Christ.
In England the faith and doctrine were the same as that of the rest of the Christian Church, testified from early times by Mellitus, Theodore, and Wilfrid. So also presumably were the liturgical books and the feasts devoted to Mary. The most important feasts were the Annunciation (25 March), the Nativity (8 September), and the Assumption (15 August) which was the Marian feast par excellence which corresponded most closely to that of the Natalis (or birthday in Heaven, i.e. the day of death) of the martyrs. About twenty English churches are known to have been dedicated to Mary by the end of the 8th century; by the Reformation the number had risen to well over 2, 000. In England too, before the Norman Conquest, there was a feast of the Conception, sometimes called the Conception of St. Anne, but not fully and explicitly declaring the Immaculate Conception as it was later formulated. Eadmer (d. c.1110), however, wrote a treatise in its favour, which was influential in its development by Duns Scotus and the Franciscan school. But in medieval times this was still disputed by Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, and the Dominicans. The doctrine of the Assumption, however, was not only unopposed, but testified to by sermons and numerous works of art which depict the Coronation of the Virgin.
The development of Marian devotion in England took another step forward in the 12th century with the collection of stories of Miracles of the Blessed Virgin by William of Malmesbury, Dominic of Evesham, and others. These stressed the intercessory power of Mary in saving sinners: they emphasized her role in providing hope for those who would have despaired if they had to face the Divine Judge alone. This went together with an increased awareness of the humanity of Christ, soon to be manifested in a more tender portrayal of Christ and his mother in the 13th and subsequent centuries. The later Middle Ages were the time when, again with increased awareness of the human and emotional stress of the Passion, the Blessed Virgin was invoked as Our Lady of Pity and the devotion to the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin (a pendant to the earlier Seven Joys of Mary) was developed.
Medieval devotion to Our Lady also left its trace in English episcopal and conciliar decrees and in art and architecture. Reforming bishops like Grosseteste insisted on all the faithful knowing the Hail Mary as well as the Our Father and the Creed: it was also recommended in the Durham statutes of 1220 and other later ones.
In the 13th and 14th centuries Lady Chapels were built in cathedral, abbey, and other churches, often but not invariably at the east end. Frequently these were structures of considerable importance and beauty, as at Winchester, Ely, Long Melford, and elsewhere. In very many churches there were shrines of the Blessed Virgin with a statue or painting of her as at Caversham (Oxon.), Westminster, Willesden, Aylesford (Kent), Cardigan, Eynsham, King's Lynn, and elsewhere. Some of these have been revived in modern times, as has England's principal place of Marian pilgrimage, Walsingham (Norfolk). Here was built a replica of what was believed to be the Holy House of Nazareth as early as the 11th century. Less admirable features of this shrine were the claim to possess a phial of Mary's milk as well as the practices caricatured and condemned by Erasmus.
Anglo‐Saxon images of Mary are rare and unfamiliar, but plenty survive from the 12th century onwards in many media. The hieratic type of Madonna is represented in a famous illumination from Eynsham, which may be a representation of the local shrine‐statue, while the more tender 13th‐century example of the Chichester Roundel from the bishop's chapel reminds us that the human traits of Mary were a favourite feature of that time. But the more ancient depiction of Mary, crowned and sceptred as queen, based on Byzantine and Roman examples, was humanized into examples such as that of the Malvern stained glass. Representations of the Annunciation were also very popular, as in the sculpture at Wells cathedral of the 14th century or in the mural of Great Hockham (Norfolk) of the 15th century. Also in the later Middle Ages were developed series of paintings based on the apocryphal Gospels, sometimes representing the Life of Christ and the life of Mary in parallel, as at Croughton (Northants.). Other apocryphal elements in the Virgin's Life are featured at Chalgrove (Oxon.), while series on the Miracles of the Virgin occur both at Eton College and at Winchester cathedral. In the later medieval centuries representations of the Virgin in scenes of the Passion were more frequent; that of Our Lady of Pity at Durham, for example, was much appreciated for its presentation of the human sufferings of Mary at the Passion of her Son. Such medieval works in England and the Continent were precursors of Michelangelo's famous pietàs.
During the Reformation both in England and on the Continent many images of Mary were destroyed, particularly from rood‐screens and shrines; but the principal feasts of Mary were retained in the Book of Common Prayer, with the exception of the Assumption which was removed in 1549, but retained at Oxford University and other places. Also at Oxford Laud installed the statue over the porch of the church of St. Mary. The feasts of the Visitation (2 July), Nativity (8 September), and Conception (8 December) were never dropped, still less the Annunciation (25 March) and Purification (2 February), the latter sometimes, as now in the Roman rite, called the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
Since 1969 in the new Roman calendar New Year's Day has been explicitly devoted to Mary's role in the Incarnation and the Redemption, in accordance with ancient Roman custom. The feast of the Visitation has also been moved to 31 May, and various feasts which commemorated apparitions of the Blessed Virgin (e.g. Our Lady of Lourdes) or particular aspects of her intercession (Mediatrix of All Graces) have been reduced to the rank of local observance.
The Second Vatican Council made an extended statement of Catholic doctrine on Mary, added to the Constitution on the Church, which treats of her relation‐ship both to Christ and to the Church. It stresses her complete dependence on her Son, regards her as a model of the Church, and in emphasizing the Scriptural and Patristic elements in the cult of Mary, exhorts theologians and preachers to explain rightly the offices and privileges of the Blessed Virgin, always related to Christ, and to avoid all words and deeds which could lead ‘separated brethren and anyone else into error regarding the true doctrine of the Church’. Among Anglicans, although the Thirty‐Nine Articles forbade the invocation of Saints (Mary included), in recent times a number of theologians have adopted positions little if at all different from those of moderate Roman Catholics. In the Eastern Churches, untroubled by the controversies of the Reformation in the West, there has always been deep and universal veneration of the Blessed Virgin, and the Greek prayer Sub tuum praesidium is the oldest and perhaps the most beautiful expression of belief in the efficacy of Mary's intercession. The feast of the Dormition is equivalent to the Western one of the Assumption, but is less explicit in its formulation of this doctrine. In popular devotion the ikons of the Blessed Virgin and her son are extremely important. Islamic authors too have always had a high regard for Mary as the mother of one whom they believe was a great prophet. Perhaps the 21st century will witness some reconciliation of Christians among themselves and towards others on the role of the Blessed Virgin in the life of Christ and of those who believe in him.
Principal Marian shrines of today include Lourdes (France), Fatima (Portugal), Walsingham (England), Loreto (Italy), Czestochowa (Poland), and Guadalupe (Mexico).
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- The Documents of Vatican II (ed. W. M. Abbot, 1966)
- H. du Manoir, Maria (
8 vols., 1949–71) - K. McNamara (ed.), Mother of the Redeemer (1959)
- H. C. Graef, Mary (
2 vols., 1963–5) - R. Laurentin, La Question mariale (1963, Eng. tr. 1965)
- id., La Vierge au Concile (1965). E. L. Mascall and H. S. Box (edd.), The Blessed Virgin Mary (1963): C. Miegge, La Vergine Maria (1950, Eng. tr. 1955)
- arts. in O.D.C.C., N.C.E., Bibl. SS., D.T.C. see also G. Duby (ed.), Marie: le culte de la Vierge dans la société médievale (1996), M. Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo‐Saxon England (1984). R. E. Brown and others, Mary in the New Testament (1978)
