Throuah -the Centuri

Mar) Through the Centuries

Htl !'IIM In 1M History orCuhurt
Jo r~la\ Prlikon

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Mary Through the Centuries
Mary Through the Centuries
 Jaroslav Pelikan

Through the Centuries

Her Place in the Histary of Culture

Yalt Unil'trSilY Press New HavfII and London

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 To Ma rtha and Anne Therese
Each ill her own ~peCJaJ w.I;y MuIJ('r funis (Proverbs 31 10 Vg)
 Contents

Prdoct ix

imrooucuon' Axt Maria, Graria Pima \

Mirlolil1 or Nazueth in the New Testament 7

2 The Daughter or lIOn and the Fulrillment or Prophecy 23

3 The Se<:ond Eve and the Guarantee of Christ'~

True Hum~nll y 39

4 The TheolOKOS. the Mother of Go<! S5

S The Herome of the Qur'3!1 and the Black Madonna 67

6 The! l~ndmald of the Lord and the Woman of v~lor 8!

7 The Adornment of Worship ~nd the Leader of the

Heavenly ChOir 97

8 The P~ra~on ofCh~st1!r and the Blessed Mother 1\3

9 The Maler Dolorosa and the Mediatrix 125

vH CO';UI'H

10 The Face That Most Rc~embles Christ's 139

11 The Model of Faith iII the Word of God 153

12 The Mater Gioriosa and the Eternal Feminine 16S

13 The Woman Clothed with the Sun 177

14 The Great Exception. Immaculately Conceived 189

1S The Queen of Heaven. Her Dormition and

Her Assumption 201

16 The Woman for All Seasons-And All Reasons 11 S

Bibliographic Nate 225

AbbrC\iatioru 229

No(es 231

Index of Proper Names 259

Index uf Biblical R&rences 264

COIOf plates follow page 84

AtlrlbUl~d to 5.I,nt Luk~ lh~ lton p,anl1~r. 0", I..IJ)' of C~oc""''''' QUml of Poland. (Photo
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 Preface

lready while I was planning and writing my ltsu5 Through the

Cmturits. which YaJe University Press published In 1985 , I was simul-
taneously planning a companion volume on Mary. In spite of the obvious
chrollologic.tl precedence of the Mother over the Son, however, both the
relative amounts of the material dealing with them throtlghout history
and the absolute difference in their theological importance required that
the book about the Mother be published second-and that it be slightly
shorter. In both hooks, the number of images and metaphors, leitmotivs
and doclrineli-and therefore. even after oombming (wo (or more) of
these into one as 1 have thrO\lghout, the number of chapters-could have
been proliferated almost at will. But, as [ did in}tsus Through rh( Ctnturic, I
wanted to present, III roughly chronological order, a series of distinct but
related vignenes of the Virgin both in their continUity and in their devel-
opment across various cultures and "through the centuries,"
This book has been made possible by the invitation of President
Richard C Levin of yale UniversllY 10 rClUrn 10 Ihe podIUm of the
William Clyde DeVane Lectures ill the autumn of 1995 for my final

"
, " ' t." t

scmc.m:r oftcalhing a~ a profc~~or at Yak,. lOnduding fifty year, in dlt~

das\roorn here and d~ewhere. I am plea~ed as well to acknowledge the
stimlllation and imight. and in some t"ascs the bibliographical suggC\
Liom. thaL came from Lll(' ~Iudl,nt~ \\ho took Ihe DeVane Lectures as a
course My thank~ are due also to my edilOrs at Yale University Press. John
G. Ryden. Jud) Melro. and Laura Jones Dooley. and 10
thc many readers,
known and unknown. who havecommcnted on the manw;cnpt III whole
or in part at variom ~tage-,> of it.'> dcvelopment.
In most cases I havc quotcd. or sometimes adapted. the Authorized
("King James ") Version of the Engli~h Bible. except as indicated, where I
am translating a translation. for example, "TIle Woman of Valor" in the
title of chapler 6, a~ a rendering of mulier fortis from the Vulgate (abbreVi-
ated "Vg") ofPro\'erb~ 3 J: ! 0, the Latin title that I am also pleased, in the
Dedication, to award to my ~Iovcd daughters-in-law Translations of
other works arc sometimes borrowed or adapted from existing vcr,ion.,
and sometimes arc Illy own.
Mary Through the Centuries
I\U'\'~H .chool. Iw\"lftll ceolUey. ~ Vira'" ~r In. G'<c1 ~" (nll.,.j Tn. V"sjn 0'0lI1 ~r
)mxl«ll). Trtll'a."v G~lIN)'. \i(>';Co,," (S<;~lll Art I\~rou";,,. NY)
 Introduction
Ave Maria. Gratia Plena

Hail Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thO!e.

-luke 1:28 (Vg)

he second sentence of the Introduaion to jtsus Through tht Cmlurin,

the com~ion volume to this book, posed the question: "I f it were.
possible. with some sort of supermagnet, to pull up out of that history [of
almost (,vcnty centuries] every scrap of metal bearing at lea~t a trace orhis
name, how much would be left?" I The same question may be Olppro-
priately asked also about Mary. There are, on one hand, many fewer such
scraps of metal bearing the name Mary. But on the other hand. she h as
provided the coment of the definition of the feminine in a way that he has
not done for the masculine; for in a distinction of linguistic usage about
H

which it may be necessary to remind present-da y readers. it was "man

as humani ty rather than merely " man " as mAle that he was chiefly said 10
have defined-to the point that some speculative thin kers were willing 10
portray him as androgynous. Even in the absence of reliable stil.tistical
data, however, it is probii.bly safe to estimate that for nearly tWO thousand
years "Mary" has been the name most freq uen tl y gi ....en to girls at bap-
tism, and, through the exclamation "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph" (or just
"Jeiis Miria!" as r used to hear it in Slovak from my fath er's Lutheran

,
, ,~

pamh i onl'r~ dUrLng my I:hildhood), and abo\'e all through the A\'~ Marla.
which ha~ been repeated hlt'rally millions of times evcry clay, the female
name thai ha~ been pronounced 1ll0~t often in the vVcsttrn world. AlmOl,t
(cetainly she ha!. been portrayed in art and music more than any mher
woman in hi_~tory. To mention only one example for now, not only (lid
Giuseppe Verdi tOmpose an Me Maria in 1889 (as well as a Slaool Maler in
18,}7): but Arrigo BoilO\ adaptation orShakespearc'~ Othello for Verdi's
operd in 1887 followed Gioacrhino Ro~~illl's opera Oldlo of 1816 in
adding an AI't Moria 10 Shal~ptarc's teXI for Dcsnemona 10 ~ing Iml
before her death 1 h cam(' in anticipation of the questiOn Othello asked
Desdemona in Shakespeare's" play before he stu.ngled he r. "Have you
pray'd to-night, De~demona?"J
The Virgin Mlly ha~ been more of an inspiration to more peopk
than any Other woman who ever lh·ed. And she Telllallllo 1o0 in the
twentieth centllry, "espite ils hemg comemionally regarded as secu-
laristic by contrast with previous so-called ages of faith The last em-
press of Ru\~ia, Alexandra, who al her marriage (0 the czar had con~

verted from He,>-~ian PrOleSlami<;1Il to Russian Orthodox}". wrote a few

weeks afler the Ocrober Revolution: "An Ulltulrured, \\dd people. but
Ihe Lord won't abandon them. and the Holy Mother of God will stand
up for our poor Rus ..... II was only a coincidence. but a striking one,
that twO rears later. in 1919, the powerful icon Thr Vi'lllfl of the Grall
P[IJ\(Igia, shown here, was discovered in the Convent of the Transfigura-
tion (PI((lbroimi~) al Jam'Slav!. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. in ~peaking ncar
the end aboUl all the tragedies she had endllred in her klllg life. said
that she had constantly found inspiration and consolation above 0111 in
"the B1c.<;~ed Mother." who had not lost her faith ill God e\'en when
her Son had been "cruCified and redled, "S Olle of our mo~t sensitive
commentators all CUTTent affairs. the Hispanic-American man oflellerlo
Richard Rodriguez. ha~ wggesled Ihal "the Virgin of Guadalupe sym-
bolizes the entire wherenc!' of Mexico, body and soul. _The image
of Our Ladr of GUilcblupe (priutcl)'. affecuonately, Mexicans can her
La Morenita-Little Darkling) ha~ bc<;omc the unoffiCial, the pri\ate
Rag of Mexicans."6 For the portrap.l of the Virgin Mar)' in this Mexi-
 r"T~O[) U CTI O ~ 3

can image. as another twentieth-century wrHer has suggested. "con-

tainli the ... basic themes of Iiberation."7
Secularistic or not. this century has. for example. witnessed a con-
dnuation, and probably an acceleration, of the phenomenon of appari-
tions of Mary, for which the ni neteenth century became almost a
golden age. 8 The Mariological scholar Rene Laurentin estimated some
years ago that there had been well over two hundred of them since the
I 930li. and they have continued unabated. TeJevi~ion reponers and
print journalists. who sometimes seem to become interested in the
phenomena of religious experience and expression only when they are
politicized or bizarre or both, have managed to keep the public well
informed about these sightings. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, which in 1914
was the fuse that Ignited the First World War and which throughout the
century has connnued to be a venue for religious harred and ethnic
violence. the Virgin appeared in 198 1. at Med)ugorje, a Croatian-speak-
ing village of 250 families. 9 Since then, more than twenty million
pilgrims have visited h. despite the land mines and the sniper fire. and it
has been given nedit by no less an authority on such matters than the
president of Croatia, Fran jo Tudjman. for "the reawakening of the
Croatian nation."IU Nor is this phenomenon confined to Roman utho-
lie countries; in Orthodox Greece, for example, apparitions of the Vir-
gin in the twentieth century have become a major force.!!
Because, as was said just when the twentieth century wa~ begin-
ning, it was traditionally held that "in Muy, we see in the little that is
told of her what a true woman ought [0 be."n the twentieth century's
dramatic upsurge of interest in the question of exactly "what a true
woman ought to be" ha~ likewise been unable to ignore her.! l It has
become a widely held historical consensm that "the. theology of the
Virgin Mary has not altered women's inferior status within the
Church." Ii Indeed. one of the most articulate spokeswomen for the
position thiU the modern ....,oman cannot be truly free witham a radical
break from tradition, above all from religIOUS tradition, has charac-
teriLed the traditional picture of the VirgJO Mary a.~ follows: "For the
first time in history, the mother kneels before her son; she freely accepts
her inferiontr This is lhe ~uprcme m<l~cuhne viuoq. conl'iUmm<ltL-d 111
the cult of the Virgin-it is the reh<lbiliwion of woman through tllt'
<lccomplishment of her clcfeat" I " More al11 bivalently, advocates for the
mmemcnt within the dui~tlan thought of the I'He twentieth century thaI
has come to be called "femtm~t theology" havc also been ;;lriving-
or, as one of them h<ls put it, ,. dCl'iper~tely seeking" It._ to come to term!>
with Mary as a ~ymhol for "ultimate womallhood. "I] "The M~ry myth,"
another of ulem has concluded. 11<1;-' hi\.'; root~ and development in a mall'.
clcrical, and a!>cellC culture and theology. .. TIle m}'th is a theolog}' of
woman, preaLhed by men to \\umen, and onc that serves to deter women
from beCOlllll1g fully indepelident and whole human persons."IS Con
versdy, Mary has also served advocates of Ea~tern Orthodoxy as a positive
resource for the reinterpretation of the place of woman In Christian
thought 19
One of the most imllOrUnt religious eVcnts of the ll\-cnlicth century
has been, and continues to be, the fiSC of the ecumenical movement. It
began as a largety a Protestant phenomenon with the heirs of the
Reformation reexamining the issues that h<ld begun to dril'e them apart
almost from the beginning. Al that stage. the question of Mary did not
playa prominent role, except for the di~plltes betwt'(!n liberalism ancl
fundamentab~m over tlle historical accuracy of the bibhc;).l accollnts of
the Virgin Birth. lo But with the participation of Eastem Orthodox and
then of Roman Catholic partners in the con\'ersation. the question
hcrame unavoidable. and evcntually it came to be seen l!1 significaBl
ways as epitomizing many general issues that divide the churches: What
is the legl1imiltc role of postbiblical tradition in ClHlstian ll'ilchlllg?
What is the role or tbe saint~, and <lhove all of this saint. in Cbristi<ln
worship and de\'onon? And who has the authomy to d('"dde matters of
Chrisllan tcaching? Thus twentieth-century explorations have made the
history of Marya major issue aho for the ecumenical cncounter, and a
careful and candid review of the issue and its implicatiOns rrom Roman
C<ltholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant. and e\'cn Jewish per~pcrti\'e!i
has illumined not only the ecumenical problem hut the problem of
Mariology.21
 ll.:TRODUCTIOI; S

In the chapters that follow I shall try to show historically what Mary
has meant, by following a rougllly chronological order to box the
compass of some of the province.'> of life and realms of reality in which
she h~ been a prominent ron::e at various periods in history. It has beell a
process, as HilJls Vrs von Bahhasar has put it, "that oscillates (from the
Virgin Bride to the Mother of the Church, from the answering person to
the Source of the race)."22
Jail Vall F),tk, Th< AMUIKMIOII. C I .. 30. dcull of the Angel G.b,id, c.,m.ildcg.I~'i~.
St ..tliChe Kun~tSilmmlun~l'u. Olewen. (A],Harll An Rl'wurlc. NY.)
I Miriam of Nazareth in the New Testament

And in 1M sb:l~ IOOmh dlf angel Gabriel W!IS SfJ'lt (rom God
UIlI!) II city of Gulilet. noma! Namrah, [0 II yirgin
tspousd 10 a man oomal Joseph. of tM hoost of David,
and [h~ virgins name \\-115 Mary. - lukt 1:26-27

&a.use this book is not an inquiry into who Mary was in the first
century bm imo what " Ihrough me centuries" she has been experienced
and understood to be, biblical materials dealing wilh her have an essen-
tially retrospective function here. In light of the subsequent development
of devotion and doctrine, what did the Bible contribute La lhe portrait of
the Virgin? That perspective applies with particular force to the subject of
the next chapter, the allegorical and typological use of <I. Christianized Old
Testament for its bearing o n the quesllon of Mary. where the problem of
the original meaning of a passage, mcluding the precise translation o f the
Hebrew text, will h ave to be quite secondary to the meaning that the
passage acquired In Christian history through translation and exegesis.
But the New Testament, certainly no less than the Old, has continually
taken on new meanings in the course of the hi~tory of its interpretation,
meanings that have sometimes been the consequence o f what II did not
say a.~ much as of what It did. For to both Testamems we may apply the
sage comment of a scholar of the Hebrew Bible who has illumined some
special chapters in the 11Isiory of its interpretation. "Just as a pearl results

,
from a stimulus In the shell of a mollusk," Ll'Hlis Ginzherg observed, "so
also a legend may arise from an Irritant in the ~cripture," I Whether as
stimulus or irritant or inspiration, Scripture has dominated auelllion to
the Virgin Ma.ry though it has nOt always controlled It.

Ne\-erthcless, the account of Mary in the New Testament is tanta

li/ingly bnef. and myone who comes to consider the biblical references
to Ma ry from the study of later development of devotion to her and of
doctrine about her, as tim. book i~ dOing, must be surprised or e\en
shocked to di~cover how sparse they are. One interpreter early In thi~
Lcntury, who was intent on maximizing the evidence as far as perr1l1ssi-
ble (and perhaps a little farthe r). was compelled to acknowledge that
·'the reader of the gospels is at first surprised to find so lillIe about
Mary"! Or, a~ the leading Greek-English leXIcon of the New Testament
put it in identifying the first of the seven women bearing the name Maria
in the New Testament, "Little is known about the hfe of thi.~ Mary."3
Depending on what one indudes, it could all be printed out on a few
pages. If that ....-ere all there were to go on. this book would he short
indeed! In fact. the contrast between the biblical evidence and the tradi-
tional material is ~o striking that it has become a significant issue in the
ecumenical elKOltnter hetWt'en denominations." Out of that enCOunter
has come a volume JOintly wruten by Roman Catholic and Prote~tant
scholars entitled Mary In the New Testommt and devoted to a book-by-book
and topic by-topic analYSIS of the possible referenL't!S to Mary in the New
Te~tamenL Although the work has all the disadvantages of a book that
has heen not only jOintly wrinen but subjected to a series of votes, it has
assembled the material in a convenIent form_ E\·en more surprislllgly, it
refleus a remarkable consensus acros~ confessionalltnes. especially in its
adheren(;c to the historkal-critical method of slUdylllg the Bible but
even In iL~ conclusions about individual passage~ of the New Testament.
Pointmg OUI that "in the course of centuries mariology has had an
enormous dcvelopmelll" (which is the business of thIS book). the au-
thors of Mary in lht NOl Testammt, because of their focus. paid linle men-
110n to Ihat de\'elopl11ent,~
 MTftlAM Of NAlAlHI! ~

For bihlical scholarship, the fact that "in the course of centuries
mariology has had an enormous development" may be something of a
problem. But for historical scholarship. that development is also an
enormous resource. To be sure. Mariology was not the only doctrine to
have undergone such a development; in fact. it would be impossible to
idelllify a doctrine that has not done so. The most decisive instance of
the development of doctrine, and the one hy which (he fundamental
is,mes of what could by now be called "me doctrine of development"
have been defined, is the dogma of the Trinity. For me doctrine of me
Trinity was nOt as such a teaching of me New Testament, but It emerged
from the life and worship. the reflection and controversy. of me church
as, in the judgment of Christian orthodoxy, the only way the church
could be faithful (Q the teaching of lhe New Tcstamem. It did so afler
cenmries of study and speculation. during which many solullons 10 the
dIlemma of the Three and the One had surfaced, each with some
passage or theme of Scripture to commend it. The hnal normative
formulation of the dogma of the Trinity by the first ecumenical council
of the church, held at Nicaea in 325, took as its basic outline the biblical
formula of the so-ailed great commission of Chris! 10 the disciples just
before his ascension: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, haptizing them in the
name of me Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."6 But into the
framework of that New Testament formula the Nicene Creed had
packed many Olher biblical mOtifs. as well as the portentOus and non-
biblical technical term for which it became known. suggested appar-
ently by Emperor Constantine: "one in being with the Father [bomoousiO:S
101 palri]. " 7 With characteristic acuity, tberefore. John Courtney Murray
once formulated the implicalions of Ihi.~ for the ecumenical situation: "r
consider that the parting of the ways hetwcen the two Christian com-
munities takes place on the issue of development of doctrine .... I do
not think that the firsl ecumenical question IS, whal thlllk ye of the
Church? Or even. what think ye of Christ? The diaJogue would rise out
of the current t:Onfusion if the first question raised were. whallhink ye
of the Nicene homOOllSlon )"8 [f lile Protestant churches acknowledged
the validity of Ihe development of doctnne when it moved from the
great commission of the Gospel of Matthew to produce the Nitene
Creed, a,> all of the mainline Protestant churches did and do, on what
grounds could they reject development as it had moved from other
lapidary passages of the Bible 10 lead to other doctrines)
From the apparently ~irnple stalemems "This is my body" and "This
is my blood" in the words of institution of the Lord's Supper,9 for
example, had come not only the resplendent eucharistic liturgies of
Eastern Orthodoxy and the Latin Mass with all ils concomllams, includ-
mg the reservation of the consenated Ho~t and devotion to it. hut Ihe
long and complicated history of the developmelll of the doctrine of the
real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Sdcramenl, leading
m the Western church to the promulgation of the doctrine of transub-
~tantiation at the Fourth Lateran Council in IllS and JtS reaffirmation
by the Council of Trent tn I 55 I . I 0 If the First Council of Nitaca was a
legitimate development and the Fourth Council of Ihe Lateran an ille-
gitimate development, what were me criteria, biblical and dOCtrinal, for
discerning the difference? As II ~tood, the Statement of Christ to Peter in
the New Testament, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock J will build my
church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," j j left more
questions unanswered than answered. But by the lime me development
of doctrine had done itS work on lhe J»ssage, it had come to mean. III
the formula of Pope Boniface VlII, that "to every creature it is necessary
for salvation to be subject to the Roman pontiff"ll To reject this
development of doctrine on the argument that it was a development
and that development was in itself unacceptable made It difficult for the
biblical exege~ts of the Reformation and post-Reformation penods to
contend with those on the left wing of the Reformation who. sharing
the insi~tence of the "rnagi~terial Reformer_~" on the sole authority of
SeriplUfe, rejected the re.liance on the trinitarian doctrine of Nicaea as a
necessary presupposition and method for reading blbhca! texts.
For haVing thus devdopcd out of Scripture, the trmitarian pcrspec-
twe had in turn become a way-or, father. the way-of interpreting
 MlllA" O. /-IAlAI\IlH II

ScripLUre. As it was systematized al least for the West chiefly by Au-

gustine, this mt!thod of biblical exegesis was cast in the form of a
"canonical rule (canonica regula] ." 13 The several passages of the Bible that
appeared directly to substantiate the dogma of the Trinity, such as above
all the baptismal formula at the dose of the Gospel according to Mat-
thew and the prologue about the divinity of the logos at me opening of
the Gospel according to John, I .. mutually reinforced each other to form
the biblical proof for church doctrine. Conversely, however, any pas-
sages that, taken as they stood, appeared to comradict church doctrine
were subject to the '·canonical rule" and required careful handling.
When, several chapters after the solemn prologue, "And the Word was
God," the Gospel of John had Jesus say of himself, ··My Father is greater
than I," 15 Augustine had to bring his heaviest weapons into action . If
the Protem.nt Reformers and their descendants were willing to hold still
for such a manipulation of New Testament passages in the mterest of
upholding a doctrinal developmem that had come only in later cemu-
ries-and they were-what stood in the way of such manipulation
when the passage in question was "This is my body" or "Thou art Peter,
and upon tltis rock I will build my church"?
Perhaps nowhere, however, was the challenge of this dilenuna more
dramatically unavoidable than in the relation between the development
of the doctrine of Mary and its purported foundation in Scripture. For
some components of that doctrine, the fou ndation seemed relatively
straightforward. Both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke
left it unambiguously clear that it was as a virgin that Mary had con-
ceived her Son. 16 But further reflection did produce the puzzling dis-
crepancy that the rest of the New Testament remained so silent on the
subject, if indeed it was so unambiguous and so essential. The epistles
of Paul, the other epistles of Ihe New TestameOl. and the preaching of
the apostles as recorded in the Book of Acts-none of these contained a
hint of the virginal conception. Because Matthew and Luke did both
contain it, the other two Gospels were of special interest. Mark's Gmpel
opened with the adult ministry of Jesus and conveyed no information
about his conception, birth, and infancy. John's Gospel opened far
eArlier than Lhat, "In the beginning" when there was only God and the
Logos, Yet in its fi~t Lhapter, Just before the Lclebrated formula "And
thc \-Vord was made flcsh, and dwelt among us," 17 it carried an in-
tngulllg textual variant that was relevant to this issue. "A~ many as
received him," It promised, "to them gave he pO\vcr to become the
~ons of God, evcll to them that believe on his mme, I~hi(h l\Ut born, not

of blood, nor of the will of the Ae~h, nor of the will of man, but of
God,"11I But in ~orne carly Luil1 \Vllllesses who were not Without au-
thority on other textual questioll5, the plural rhrase "which were born,"
referring to the regener.ltion ,of believers by grace, was rcplaLed by the
Singular "who was born" or "who was begotten," appa r<:.nt[y referring
to the \·irgin binh ofChnst; and accordmg to the New Je rusalem Bible,
"there Are strong arguments fo r reading the verb in the Singular. 'who
was born: in wruch ca~e the v[ene] rcINS to Jesus' divine onglO, not
to the virgin binh,"I" Beyond this variallt, however, is the que~t1011 o f
Lhe biblical support for the idea of "virgin birth" as such, For the uncon-
tested proofs from the Gospels of MaHhew and Luke asserted only,
strictly speaking, the virginal conception, leaVing unaddrcs.sed the ques-
tion of the manner of his bIrth, nOt to mention the questiOn of the
virglllily or Mary after the birth. A related question, the identity of Lhe
"brethren" or Jesus spoken of several limes in the New Testament, will
engage us, at lea~t bri efly, at a later polm,lO Early creeds ra'i.~cd over
such distinctions when they simply confessed that hc was "born of the
Virgin Mary."!l
To summa rize the biblical materials and simultaneously to prepare
the ground for the development that followed, lilis chapter and the
next, lh.en, will look at some of the major themes of later thought a.bout
Mary as king what Ihe adumbrallons of these were seen to have been
within the text of the New and Old Testaments, This book is not the
piaLI' for an extended exegesis of these texts, but anI}' for an idcntifica-
tion of what the subsequent [radmon look to be the cvldence from the
Bible, including that portion of it which Christians came 10 call the
"Old" Testament, for the themes to follow, Some o f this material can be
comidered rather briefly; othe r te xts and torjc~ will require more dc-
 MI~T~M or ~A7.AUTK )3

tailed exegetical grounding. In these chapten., therefore, the themes that

are ''''Oven into the titles of the remaining c.:hapters provide. roughly in
the order of their appearance, an opportunity to review some of the
principal biblical texts. As epigraphs for the chapters in turn, these
passages from the twO testaments will be emblematic of the dominance
of Scripture.
All' Mario. "Hail Mary, full of grace: the Lord is w ith thee," was,
according to the Vulgate, the salutation of the angel Gabriel to Mary.n
In reaction against mat translation. and again.'>t the meaning with which
it had been freighted when "full of grace" was taken to mean that Mary
had not only been the object and the recipient of divine grace, but,
possessing that grace in its fullness, also had the right to act as its
dispenser, the Authorized Version of the Bible translated the salulation
to read: "Hail, thou that art highly fayored." The Greek passive partici-
ple being rendered by the~e conflictmg tramlations was kecharitiimme,
whme root, the noun charis and its cognates, meant "favor'· in general
and. particularly in the New Testament a.nd other early Chris[ian lite ra-
ture, referred to "grace," seen as the favor and unearned generosity of
God. 23 In the immediate context of the accounI o f the annunciation. it
does seem to have been referring first of all to the primary initiative of
God in sdecting Mary as the one who was to become the mOlher of
Jesus and thus in designating her as h is chosen one. In Martin Luther's
Christmas hymn "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her [From heaven
above to earth I come]," which was to become the leitmotiv in each
successive cantata of Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio of 1734-
35, another angel was presented as saying, to the shepherds of Bethle~
hem and through them to all the world, "Euch its ein KindJein hem'
geborn,/Von einer Jungfrau auserkoren LTo you this day i~ born a
Child, from an dect VIrgin)." That was a Refo rmation formulation for this
designation of Mary as the chosen one- "predestined one," it would
not be unwarranted to say, as, among others, the Second Vatican Coun~
cil would say in 1964 H -through whom the plan of God for the
salvation of me world was set into motion.
This historic interconfessional dispute over the full implications of
k«h(lmomrn, should nOl obscure the far more massive role played by the
opening salutation, A\'c/Hail, through the (;enturies. It carne 10 open the
prayer that ha~, it seems safe to estimate, ranked second only to the
Lord's Pra)er 11\ the number of times it ha~ been spoken O\'er those
cenlUriC!. in Western Christcndom: "Hail Mar). full of grate, the lord L~
with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and ble~~cd is the fruit of
th} womb, lesu~. Holy Mary. Mother of God . pny for m \lnnerS, now
and in the hour of our death. Amen. [AH Maria. gmlia pima. Dominus taum.
bmroicla IU m mulrtrihus, tt bmNiclUs frunus ImlllS lUi, }tms. SanCIa Maria, Maler
/Xi. oro pro ooblS pt(calonbu5, mme tl in horo mortis nmtme. Amm.1" 2 ~ 115 first
sentence, a., punctuated here: combined two biblical salutations in the
Vulgate version.H Its second sentence was a petition that combined the
poslbihli(;al title Theotokos with later Mariologiu1 dOCtrine, acwrding
to which the sal!1ts in heaven imerceded for behevers on earth. and a
fortiori that the Mother of God, being '"full of grace" and th~'refore Lhe
Mediatrix, was in a pOSitiOn to imercede for them . which they in turn
had the right to request from her directly. In a striking way, thereforc,
the Au Maria epHomized not only the iron) of Mary's having become a
major point of divi~ion among belie\'ers and between churches but ,he
dil:hotorny between the sole aUthority of Scripture and the development
of doctrinc through tradition; for even lho~e who affirrned Ihe absolme
supremacy of bIblical authOrity would Ilc\'ertheless refuse to pra) the
Impeccably blblicai words of its first sentence.
The 5«ond Ere. Because the chronological sequence of the composi-
tion of the hooks of the Ncw Testament does not corrc~pond to the
order in which they appear in our Bibles a~ a colleclloll of canonical
books, the o lde.~1 written refereJl(:e to Mary (though not b)' name) that
appeared in the New Test,uncnt W<lS nOt in any of the GospeL~ hut in
Paul's Epistle to the Galatiam: "When the fulness of the time was come,
God sent forth his Son. mQde of a lI"oman, made under the law. to redeem
them that were under the law, that we might receh'e the adoption of
<;Qns."27 Most New Testament scholar~ would agree that "made of a
woman" did no! mean or even imply "but not of a man" (although II
also did nOL exclude the ioea of the virgin binh), but rather that it was a
 Mj~IAM Of NA LA~IT H IS

Semitic expression for "human being," as in the statement "Man that is

born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble." Z8 (f'Of that matter,
Macbeth was to discover that lhe prophecy of the witches, "None of
vroman born shall harm Macbeth," did not preclude a human father-
but also that it did not indude a caesarean sel1ion!)19 Thus the phrase
in Galatians was taken from early times as a way o f speaking about Jesus
Christ as truly human, in opposition to the 'Nidespread Christian ten-
dency (conSidered in chapter 3) of supposing that the way to ensure
mat he be regarded as more than human was to describe him as less
than human. But associated with this New Testament point was one of
the devices employed by the aposlle Paul to make tms same point about
the true humanity of Christ, which he did on the basis of a special
interpretation of the Old Testament. [t was expressed in the verse "As by
one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience
of one shall many be made righteous."3o From that typology of speak-
ing about the Firs! Adam and then about Christ as lhe Second Adam it
was a shan step, albeit a step lhat the New Testament did not take, to
speak aoout Mary as the Second Eve, and thus to extrapolate from Paul's
words to say as well, "As by one [woman's] disobedience many were
made sinners, SO by the obedience of one shall many be made righ-
tcous," through the One to whom she gave birth. I shall examine in
chapter 2 how it was that because Mary, the Se<:ond Eve, was the heir of
the history of Israel, the history o f the First Eve could be-or, as the
early Christians saw it, had ro be-read as a biblical resource and a
hisrorical source for providing more information about her.
Tbr Mocba of Goo. Even in the Gospels as they have come down to us,
[he relation between Jesus and John the Baptist was a complicated one.
The evangelistS did divulge chat the ministry o f John the BaptISt had
caused "all men" among his contemporaries to "muse in their hearts of
John, whether he were the Chri.~t, or not. "3 I Nevertheless they were a[
pai ns to explain lhat John himself had identified Jesus as "the Lamb of
God, that taketh away the sin or the world" and that, when challenged,
he explicitly subordinated his historic mission to Ihat of Jesus-and his
person to that of the one "whose shoe's latchet I am nOl worthy to
16 'TI ~I ~\I 01 ~~'"~ Til

unloo:.c."j l Thi!> tendency was carried O\'cr from the relation betwccn
John and J(!!,tlS to the relation between Elilabcth and Milry. ror in the
acCOUll!of what came to be known as the vil>ltation. not only had John
the unborn "babe leaped in my womb for lOY," but Elizabeth" 50pilke out
with a loud voice. and said. Bles.sed art thou among women. and
blessed is thc fruit of thy womb. And whcnce is thi:. to me. thill the
mother of my Lord should comc to me?" J)
If thiS verbal ex.::hange between Mary and her "(Qu~in [~yngmi~r
8izabeth l .. were to be interprcted a50 haVing taken pla..:c in Aramaic or
even to have employed some Hebrew. the ti tle attributed by Elizabeth to
Mary. "the mother of my lord.·' which was he mel~r lOU kyriou mou in
Greek. could conceivably be taken as a reference to Jesus Christ as AdOnai.
"my lord," the term m.ed a~ a substitute for the ineffable divine name,
JHWH. That was. 011 any rate, how from early limes Chn~tian inter-
preters had seen the \tandard New Testament "ChrislOlogical title of
majesty"3S kyrios. whether or not the GO\pels or the apostle Paul had
intended any ~uch identification. And becau50e, in the central affirma-
tion of the fauh ofIsrael . the Shema. "Hear. 0 Israel: the lord our God
is o ne Lord," repe.Hed by Christ in the Gospels, 16 there alreadr was the
identification between "the lord" and "our God" as one. the assembled
bishops at tlH~ Councilor Ephesus in 43 I did not find it difficult to
move from Ehtabcth's formul .. of Mary ..s " the mother of my lord" to
Cynl's fo rmula of Mi'lry as Theotokos.
The B!esscJ Vi/gin. The thastitr of Mary. in paradoxical combillltion
with her materni ty. wa~ one of the element~ held in common by the
Gospel or luke and the Gospel of Matthew "And in the sixth month the
angel Gabrtel was sent from God untO a city of Gillilee, named
Nazareth, to a \'irgin esp()U.~ed to a man named Joseph, of the ho use of
David; and the vugin '~ name was Mary." Malia being one of the Greek
forms of the Hebrew name Miryam. sister of Moses. H So began. in the
first chapter of Luke's Gospel. the longest su~tained account of Mary in
the Bihle. J8 In the next ..:hapter, in the introduction to the SlOT) of the
nativity. It was ~id that Joseph-and. according to many early Chri stian
ililerpreter~, Mary as well. though this was not made explicit~9 -wa ~
16 'TI ~I ~\I 01 ~~'"~ Til

unloo:.c."j l Thi!> tendency was carried O\'cr from the relation betwccn
John and J(!!,tlS to the relation between Elilabcth and Milry. ror in the
acCOUll!of what came to be known as the vil>ltation. not only had John
the unborn "babe leaped in my womb for lOY," but Elizabeth" 50pilke out
with a loud voice. and said. Bles.sed art thou among women. and
blessed is thc fruit of thy womb. And whcnce is thi:. to me. thill the
mother of my Lord should comc to me?" J)
If thiS verbal ex.::hange between Mary and her "(Qu~in [~yngmi~r
8izabeth l .. were to be interprcted a50 haVing taken pla..:c in Aramaic or
even to have employed some Hebrew. the ti tle attributed by Elizabeth to
Mary. "the mother of my lord.·' which was he mel~r lOU kyriou mou in
Greek. could conceivably be taken as a reference to Jesus Christ as AdOnai.
"my lord," the term m.ed a~ a substitute for the ineffable divine name,
JHWH. That was. 011 any rate, how from early limes Chn~tian inter-
preters had seen the \tandard New Testament "ChrislOlogical title of
majesty"3S kyrios. whether or not the GO\pels or the apostle Paul had
intended any ~uch identification. And becau50e, in the central affirma-
tion of the fauh ofIsrael . the Shema. "Hear. 0 Israel: the lord our God
is o ne Lord," repe.Hed by Christ in the Gospels, 16 there alreadr was the
identification between "the lord" and "our God" as one. the assembled
bishops at tlH~ Councilor Ephesus in 43 I did not find it difficult to
move from Ehtabcth's formul .. of Mary ..s " the mother of my lord" to
Cynl's fo rmula of Mi'lry as Theotokos.
The B!esscJ Vi/gin. The thastitr of Mary. in paradoxical combillltion
with her materni ty. wa~ one of the element~ held in common by the
Gospel or luke and the Gospel of Matthew "And in the sixth month the
angel Gabrtel was sent from God untO a city of Gillilee, named
Nazareth, to a \'irgin esp()U.~ed to a man named Joseph, of the ho use of
David; and the vugin '~ name was Mary." Malia being one of the Greek
forms of the Hebrew name Miryam. sister of Moses. H So began. in the
first chapter of Luke's Gospel. the longest su~tained account of Mary in
the Bihle. J8 In the next ..:hapter, in the introduction to the SlOT) of the
nativity. It was ~id that Joseph-and. according to many early Chri stian
ililerpreter~, Mary as well. though this was not made explicit~9 -wa ~
"of the house and lineage of David. "40 Altbough "lith fewer details,
especially about Mary herself. Matthew's version paralleled that ofLuke,
also referring to her as a virgin and citing as evidence the prophecy of
Isaiah that "a virgm l,porthmos] shall be with child, and shall bring fonh a
son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel."41
It was Luke who in his first two chapters told the story of the
exchange between Gabriel and Mary (the annunciation, from which
the figure ofGabrie\, as depicted by Jan Van Eyck, is shown here); oflhe
exchange between FJilaheth. mother of John the Baptist. and Mary (the
visitation), including the Magnificat, "My soul doth magnify the Lord"
(which in some manuscripts was ascribed to Elizabeth rather lhan to
Mary); of the coming of the shepherds (whereas Matthew uniquely had
the coming of the Magi); and of the presentation of the infant Jesus in
the temple, with Simeon's Nunc Dimitlis. "Lord. now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace." So dominant was Mary's perspective in the
way Luke narrated the story of the birth of Jesus that some early readers
were driven to inqu ire where the:>e details h ad come from, since they
did not appear in other accounts. Luke's Gospel opened with words that
some church fathers took as an explanation: "Forasmuch as mOlny have
taken in h and to set forth in order a decbration of those things which
are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us
which from the heainning wert eyewitfll'S5e'i Gnd miniS1m of tilt word; it seemed good
to me also hal'ing had perfect understanding of all things from the my first, to write
unto thee in order. "42 Because it has uwally been historians who have
studied the structure and content of the Gospels, these introductory
words have marked Luke as the historian among the evangelists.'l3 He
used about himself the Greek word partkoloUlhaoti, which meant that he
had done hiSlOrical resea.rch, more or less as his fellow historians dId
now. The sources on which he drew for thaI research were in pari
written, including the "many [who] have taken in hand to set forth in
order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed
among us," thus apparendy including writers in addition to those who
have been preserved in the pages of our New Testament. But the sources
explici tly included the "eyewitnesses and ministers of the word," be-
UUlol' Lukl' not only did not belong to the originall'weh'e dl~ciple~ and
erewitnes~es but was nOI even a di~clple of one ofthec; rather, accord-
ing 10 tra.dition, he wa.'> a pupil and "the beloved physitian" of the
apostle Paul. who was "one born OUI of due time" in coming la~l!U the
hand of the apostles. H When Luke undertook his research into Ihe very
begmllings of 1m narrative, as reflected m the first twO chapters of his
Gospel, who would ha\'e been the "eyewitnes~es and ministers of the
word" to whom he \vould ha\e turned for what we wday would call
the "oral history" of those early events? The telling of the slory in these
chapters from the penpecli ve of the Virgin Mny seemed to Sll ggest her
as pnma.ry among these orig-inal eyewitnCl.ses .md servallls of the GOl>-
pel. In addition. ahhough Luke, being a Gentile rather than a Jew,
wrote. both in the maIO body of his Gospel and in the Book of Acts, a
Greek thai arne elmer to Attic standards than other putS of the New
Testament and that ~ounded somewhat less like a translation, that qual-
ity was not present in these chapler~. which in some respect') did seem
to be a translation from a Hebrew (or Aramaic) original These consid-
erallOns led earl) Christian writer~ to characterize the opening chapters
of Luke's Gospel ~s the memoirs of the Virglll Mary~a characterization
that has not commended itself to the historical-critial study of the
Gospels There even arose a tradition lhat Luke was the first painter of
Christian icons. and the theme of Luke paiming lhe icon of the Virgin
became standard_ H
The Mal~r Doloroso When the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed,
their summary confessions about Jesw. Christ as the Son of God,
III

moved directly from his haVing been born of the Virgin M~ry 10 his
haVing ~uffered under Pontius Pilate without so much as menlioning
his teachings or his miracles or his apo~t1e,. they were echoing. but alw
carryil1g at least one step further. the emphasis of the Gospels on his
suffering and his crucifixion. Eo!.ch Gospel. after Its own fasluon. shifted
from the indh-idual inCidents and occa~'onal glimpses of it~ previous
lIur<ltive to a far more detaIled preoccupation with the da)- b)-day and
c\'en hour-by-hour unfolding of the star), of Christ's passion and death.
From the perspective of the later history of interpretation the differ-
 \i1~J~M Of S~2~Ulli 19

ences 10 their accounts of the passIOn were well illustrated by the

compilation of "the seven words from the cross. "46
Among these seven words, John provided the one most dirtttly
relevant here: "Woman, behold thy sonl Behold thy motherl"47 Homi-
letkally if not theologically, "Behold thy mother" could easily become
the chaner for entrusting to the maternal care of Mary not only "the
diSciple w hom Jesus loved," identified by the tradition though not by
present-day scholarship as John Lhe evangelist, but all lhe disciples
whom Jesus Joved in all periods of history, therefore the entire church
past and pre~nt. As Origen of Alexandria had already put it in the first
third of the third (;enrury, "No one can apprehend the meaning of [the
Gospel of John] except he have lain on Jesus' breast and received from
Jesus Mary to be his mother also.... Is it not the case that everyone
who is perfttt lives himself no longer, but Christ lives in him; and if
Christ lives in him, then it is said of him to Mary, 'Behold thy son
Christ.' "48 But this scene also stirred the Christian imagination in more
pOignant ways; for, like the annunciation scene at the beginning of
Christ's life, it seemed to provide a window into the inner life of the
Virgin _From the beginning of Christ's life there also came the prophtty
that would be seen as justification for such an exploration of the subjec-
tivity of the Virgin when, as the Mater Delorosa, she stood at the fOOl of
the cross: "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also."49
The Mood of Faith in the Word of God. When the Epistle to the Hebrews,
in its roll call of !.he saints throughout the history of Israel. rang the
changes of those" of whom the world was nOI worthy." it introduced
each name with the formula "By failil," after Introducing this roster
with its own definition: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped
for. the evidence of things not seen."50 And when the Epistle to the
Romans defined that "faith cometh by hearing [akoii] , and hearing by
the word of God ," and opened as well as closed its tolal message with
the identification of "fait h" as "obedience [hypakOfl," 5 I it was summa-
rizing a connection betWeen obedience and fauh. and between fai lh
and the word of God. that had been e.~peciaJly prominent in the writ-
ings of the Hebrew prophets and in the teachings of Jesus. The differ-
cnle~ belween ils decl.ualion. ~o lemral lo the Prote.'>lam Reformatlon.
"Ihat a man i<; Justified br faith without Ihe deeds of the 1.1\\," and the
dt!<.lol.Tation of tht: Epl~tle of J ame~ that "h}' works a man is Justified, and
not by failh only. "H would fru~trate future attempts at hUl1lon ilatioll,
t:~pt"uall}' during the Reformation But Ihose dirrerelKe~ did not delran
frolll cHher tht' fundamental importance of faith to the enllrt: Ncw
Tt.!Slamcnl message or the centralIty of the dourine of the word of God.
The onc historical figure who played a major role in each of those
New Testament pericapes-Hcbrcws. Romans. and James-was Abra
ham_~l According to all three. he was wh.at Ram.am. ca.lled him, "the

f.ather of .all thelll th.at believe."H But if there were to be a "mother of

.all them that believe," the pnn1t: candid.ate would have to be Mu}, jusl
.as Esc was idennfied In the Book of GenesIs .as "the mother of all
1i\'lIlg"~~ The key smemenl by which Mar}' qualified for sudl a title
wa,; 11cr response to the angel Gabocl. and through the angel to thc God
whme messenger Gabriel was: "Be It untO mc according to thy word"H
For without invoking the word "faith" explicitly. the~e worth put into
a(.:llon Ihe identification of faith with obedience. and by deSCribing he r
obedlente t(l the word of God made of her the model of faith, Indeed,
ocgtnillng with Mary ami moving backw.ard through the hi:;tory of
Israel. 1\ would be pOSSible 10 deVise a roll uU of female sallll.<.-E\'{~ and
Sarah. Esther and Rwh. and man~' more-of whom she was an exemplar.
Ill\1 a,~ 1\ would be possible to bcglll with Mary and COnstrUll a simi lar
roster of f('male saints since the New Tc~tamem era, And by its emphaSIS
on faith such a roster could commend itself e\e11 to those heirs of the
PrOte\tarll Reformation who have traditionally regarded with profound
msplcion any web elitism amoTlg believers
The Woman To, All Srosoos. Ro.qers of this kind would. of lOUrsI.'. be a
part, but only a small p.1rt. of all tho~e who through the (emuriCl> h.a\'c
found in the Virgin Mar}' an object of devotion .and a model of the
godly life. for Ihey shall occupy the balance of this book As she wa~
represl'nted as predicung. "Por. hellOld. from henceforth all generations
,hall tall me hlessed."u TI1l" wa\ one of relatively few pa%age~ III the
New Testament that seemed to envi~lon a long period of many genera-
 _'''~lAM Of N~Z~~ETH 21

tions to come, along with the prophecy of Christ that "this gospel shall
be preached in the wholc world."sa The content with which those
succt:Ssive generations would invt:St the title "blessed" v,uuld vary
greatly through the centuries, but the striking quality would be the
success with which, in all seasons, Mary's blessedness would be seen as
relevant to men and woman in an equal variety of situations. And that
has tru1y made her the Woman for All Seasons.
2 The Daughter of Zion
and the Fulfillment of Prophecy

He hath holpm his St'fyant lsroe!, in mnembranct of his mercy.

as he 5pak~ to our [others, to Abraham. and to his 5tt.II for Co'ft.
- LUM 1:54-55

n il real sense, our inquiry into the witness of the New Testament to
the Virgin Mary has been begging the question -and. in light of subse-
quent history, begging it falsely. For with their belief in the u nity of the
Bible. where "the New Testament 15 hidden in the Old and the Old
becomes visible in the New [Novum in Vf!eft law, VtIUS in Noro paId]," and
wirn the consequent ability to toggle effortlessly from one Testament to
the other and from fulfi ll ment to prophecy and back again, biblical
interpreters throughout most of Christian history have had available to
them it vasl body of supplementary matenal to make up for the emhar-
rassing circumstance that, as quoted earlier, " the reader of the gospels is
at first surprised to find so little about Mary." 1 For lhe reader of the four
Gospels was not reading only the Gospels, nor even only the New Testa-
ment, for inform ation about Mary. Indeed, before there were the four
Gospels, much less the entire New Testament, there was a Scripture,
which Christians evcorually came to call "Old Testament" and which.
because of the centrality of typology and allegory, and hecause of the
<.:oncept of prophecy and fulfillment. we are ohhged to call a "Christian

"
H D~UGIIH~OflIO"

&T1pture_"l The authors of the \'olume dted earlier, Mary In the New
Teslammt, could content themselves with the reminder that "in some
Roman Catholic mariology, there is a study of how Mary's role was
foreshadowed In certain OT [Old TestamentJ passages, on the principle
that, just as God prepared the way for Ilis Son in thl! history of Israel, so
too He prepared the way for the mother of His Son ,"} As the history of
the development of biblical interpretation in the early church makes
evident, moreover, it was not only, as this comment suggests, "some
Roman Catholic mariology" but the entire patristic tradition East and
West, that carried on such study of the foreshadowing of Mary in the Old
•
Testament. Many of the rubrics considered m chapter I about the witness
of the New Testament could just as easily find a place here; and as in that
chapter, the attention required by the biblical material varies widely.
For our purposes, therefore, the evidence of the Bible is important
not because of its contrast with subsequent tradition but predsely be~
cause of its anticipation of that tradition. Or, to put it the other way
around and more accurately, the biblical evidence is interesting in the
light of the way the subsequent tradition used it-or. as some might say.
misused it. TIle rationale for the distinctive characteristic of this biblical
evidence is to be found in the phrase from the Christmas Gospel, "o( the
house and lineage of David. " .. As it stood in the Gospel, this referred to
Joseph, not to Mary, whose lineage was not traced in the genealogies
provided by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. 5 But it was also those same
two Gospels that made a point o( the virginal conception of Jesus and
therefore of the conclusion that Joseph was only" supposed "6 by some-
hut clearly not by the evangelists- to have been the father of Jesus. If
"son of David" was in the language of the Gospels a way of affirming the
continuity of Jesus Clmst with Israel and the continuity of his kingship
with tIm of his celebrated forefather. then his descent from David had to
be through his only human parent. Mary. who must then also have been
"of the house and lineage of David ." That reasoning has provided the
justification for the practice of going far beyond and behind the New
Testament, hy ~earching through the ancient Scriptures of Israel (or
prophecies and panllels, topics and typologies, that would ennch and
amplify the tiny sheaf of data from the Gospels: Miriam, sL~ter of Moses,
of course, because of her name, but also Mother Eve; and then all the
female personifications, above all in the writings carrying the name of
King Solomon, particularly the figure of Wisdom in the eighth chapter of
the Book of Proverbs and, among the books called Apocryphal or Deu-
terocanonicai, in the Wisdom of Solomon (the name Wisdom being femi -
nine, as is Cookman in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek, Sapimtia in Latin, and
Pranudrost in Russian) and the Bride in the Song of Songs, which was the
longest and the most lavish POrtrait of a woman anywhere in the Bible.
The process of appropriating this material for the purposes of Marian
devotion and doct rine, wh ich mAy be described as a methodology of
amplification, was, 011 one hand, part of the much larger process of
allegoricAl and figurative interpretation of the Bible, to which we owe
some of the most imaginAtive and beautiful commem4Cies, in words and
In pictures, in all of Medieval and Byzantine cultUre. It was, on the mher
hAnd, and Almost against the intention of those who prAniced it, a
powerful affirmation that because Mary was, according to the reasoning
summarized earlier, "of the house and lineage of David, " she represented
the unbreakable link between Jewish and Christian history, between me
First Covenant within which she was born and the Second Covenant (a
which she gAve bIrth, so that even the most virulent of Christian anti-
Semites could nol deny that she, the most blessed among women, was a
Jew. Without explicit connection to the Virgin Mary. Marc Chagall's
ponrail of a pregnant woman exalted to heaven cannot help but cOllVey
this reminder.
Tbt Black Modonna. One of the most impressivl! results of the Mariologi-
cal interpretation of the Old Testamem being discussed in Lhis chapter
was the appliCAtion of the lush imagery of the Song of Songs to Mary.
"Nigro sum sal formosa fIam black but comdy] " were almost the first words
of the Bride in the Song. 7 From those \vords came the biblical justifixation
for the many portraits of MAry that have shunned the convemional repre-
sentation of her as Italian o r Nonh European in favo r of the Black Ma-
donna. As it Stood., the statement seemed to bespeak an all tOO widespread
sense of wntrAdiction between blackness and comeliness. But in his
2~ DAUG H TH OF Z I Q ~'

definitive commentJr)' on Lhe Song ofSong5, Marvin Pope has convinc-

ingly shown on linguistic grounds thal "Blac k am I and beautiful," llot
"but beautiful," is the correct transl~tion of the Hebrew of this verse,
which has also been preserved in the Greek of the Septuagint: Me1aina dmi
kai kale, The grammatical conjunction was, of course, less imponaillthan
thc substaillive conncction. If, as I am presupposing throughout this
book, the histor y of the interpretation of the Bible has not been confined
to commentaries and sermons but has been the sllbju.:t of the arts and of
daily life, the Black Madonnas ofCz~stochowa and Guadalupe ("La Mo-
renita-Lillie Darkling")8 have expressed for countless millions, more
eloquently than books could have, lhe exegetical illtuition that, regard-
less of the translation, the Virgin was indeed black Qnd beauti f ul. That also
made her a special ambassador to that vaSl m ajority of the human race
who were not white.
The Woman of Valor. 1 have already mentioned that the early Chr istians
~eaf(:hed in the Jev.ish Scriptures, and specifically in the early chapters of
Genesis. for prophecies that were fulfilled in the gospeL The most nota-
ble- notable enough to have event ually earned the name of first gospel
or protevangcl-was the promise of God after the fall of Adam and Eve. It
was addressed to the serpent (taken by common consent to be the devil):
"And I will put enmity between thee and the wom an, and between lhy
seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head , and thou shalt brUise his
hed ."9 lrenaeus of Lyons. writing in the second half of the second
century, expounded this text at great length to prove that Jesus was lhe
seed of the woman and the Son of God, who as the Second Adam had
withstwd the assault of the tempter, lonqlH::ring where the First Adam
had been conquered , and who 011 the cross had been "bruised" by the
serpent bUl had crushed him in the process. 10 On the basis of the best
manuscripts it is the general agreement of modern students of the Vulgate
text that Jerome, who was one of the few scholars in the first several
centuries of Christian history to know Hebrew as well as Greek and Latin,
translated this in the same sense as the King James Version just quoted (a~
it appears in lhe best critical edition of the Vulgale, published in J 986):
"'nimicitias ponom inter Ie (I mulimm. cl semm tuum et Sfmen illius; ipsum contnel
 OAU<lH~H OJ liD>; 17

caput tuum, et IU contU(5 Cdkanrum eius." But al some poinl in the transmission
of the Latin text of the Vulgate, whether by mistake or by fraud or by
pious reflection, that neuter "ipsum" corresponding to the neuter of"S(fTlOl
[seed]" was changed to a feminine: "lnimicitias panaro inter Ie et muliertm,
et stml'1l tuum et semen illias; ipsa contmt caput tuum, et tu iruidiabtris calcanto
eius. "II In poems and works of art througho ut the Lalin West, this tran sl a ~
tion inspired images of the humble Virgin triumphing over the proud
tempter. 11
And, in keepmg with the approp riation of Old Tcstamentlanguage in
the interest of amplifying the New Testament, she came to be seen as the '
divinely given answer to the question of the final chapter of the Book of
Proverbs, which the Authorized Version rendered with "who can find a
virtuous woman?": "Mulierem forrem qllis inveniet? [The woman of valor. who
will find?]" 13 M.uy as the Mulier !'ortis was an extension and expamion of
Mary as the5e<ond Eve. who had entered the lists o f battle as the First Eve
had done but who. being fortis. had defeated the devil, conquering the
conqueror. By extension, therefore, she could become the patron of
victory. Her blessing was invoked by armies going into battle. particularly
against those who were perceived to be the enemies of the faith, such as
the Muslims. Her images were carried on banners and on the person of
the warrior, As Tolstoy had Princess Marya Bolkonskaya in War and Proce (a
character modeled after his mother) say at the end of a letter to her friend
Julie, lamenting "this unfortunate war into which we have been drawn,
God knows how and why" : "Farewell, dear. good fnend. May o ur divi ne
Savior and His most Holy Mother keep you in their holy and almighty
CMe. Muya." I .. And "our divine Savior and His most Holy Mother" \-\-'ere
able also to keep soldiers in their holy and almighty care during battle,
because Chri st as Chris(lJs Vic!tlf and his Mother as Mulier Fortis could be not
only gentle and humble but fierce and victorio us. This was, once again, a
picture of Mary thal was, on the basis of this method of biblical inter~
pretation, more evident in the Old Testament than in the New but that
then could on that basis be found in the New Testament as well. It could
also provide women of the Middle Ages with some sense of what they
might be-and of what, by the election of God, they could be. For the
a lJ AUG H H R 0 > lEO 'l

most ~ensalional Medieval answer to the question of Proverbs aboullhe

Woman of Valor was Joan of Arc.
The Lmder of the HWI'mly Choir. In ~pite of Ihe use of Eve and of various
female figures from the Solomonic writings, in many respectS the most
obvious prototype of Mary anywhere in the Old Testament had to be
Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, for whom the Virgin was almost
certainly named. The Hebrew name Miryom for the sister of Moses was
rendered into Greek in several slightly divergent forms: Maria, Marda.
Mariam, Mariame. ls Both the form Maria and the form Mariam appeared in
the Gospels, with the first being employed illitially by Matthew and the
second being employed initially by Luke. Except for the name itself.
however, it \VQuld seem to be vain to look within the pages of the New
Testament for any typology involVing the mother of]esus and the sister of
Moses. But once it had become legitimate, indeed imperative, for Chris-
tian interpreters to invoke what we have been calling here the methodol -
ogy of amplification, an imaginative interpreter of the Bible such as
Augustine was drawn to Ihe text from the history of the victory of the
children of Israel over the armies of Pharaoh at the Red Sea, as described
in the Book of Exodus: "And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron,
took a timbrel in her hand: and all the women went out after her with
timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the
Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he
thrown into the sea."16 The powerful impact of that scene was height-
ened still further. in a stroke of musical and dramatic genius, by George
Frideric Handel in his Israel in Egypt, when he switched the order of these
verses 20 and 2 1 in the fifteenth chapter of Exodus with verse 1 ill such a
way that Miriam became the choregos, like the leader of the chorus in
Aeschylus or Sophoclcs_But Marian devotion had, ill efiect. done )uslthat
long before, by applying the implications of the title Daughter of Zion to
the typology of Mary and Miriam.
Em-Virgin [Semper Virgo]. Although neither the writings of th e apostle
Paul nor the earliest Gospel. that of Mark, contained an}" reference to the
virgin birth, that same biblical resource and historical source of Jewish
Scripture did: or aL any rate, it did in the Greek translation of it that had
 D~UC;HT.R O F Z I ON 29

been prepared b y the Jews of Alexandri. during the century or two

before the rise of Christi.nity. the SeplU.gint. From that source it came to
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, with Matthew quoting as authority the
Greek translation of the prophecy of Isaiah: "Therefore the Lord himself
shall give you a sign; Behold,. virgin [parthalos in the Septuagint] shall
conceive, and bear a son, .nd shall call his name Immanuel. ",7 The Greek
pdrthenos was the translation of a Hebrew word that meant "young
woman," not spedfically "vi rgin," and the word was so quoted in the
Greek New Testament. Mary asked the angel of the annunciation: "How
shall lhis be, seeing that I know nOt a man?"18 Three of the Gospels-
Matthew, Mark, and john. but not Luke-did speak in later chapters
about "brethren" of Ch rist. 1 9 as did the apostle Paul. 20 The apparently
obvious and noll ural conclusion from this would seem to have been thai
after the miraculous conception of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spi rit.
Mary and Joseph went on to have other children of their own.
But that was not the conclusion that the vast majority of early Chris-
tian teachers drew. Instead. they came to caU Mary Ever-Virgin. Aeipar-
[halOS. Semper Virgo. To do this in the light of biblical materials about the
"breduen" of Jesus, they had to feson to some elaborate biblical argu-
ments. The biblical support for calling Mary Ever-Virgin. however, came
not chiefly from the New Testament but from the Song of Songs: "A
garden inclmed is my sister. my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain
sealed (Hartus conclusus. S{lror roM sponsa, oouus candusus. (ons sigoorus]. "11 Thus
jerome. after stringing together a series of texts from the Song of Songs,
came to this verse, which he took to be a reference to "the mother of our
Lord, who was a mother and a Virgin. Hence it was that no one before or
after our Savior was lain in his new tomb, hewn in the solid rock. "12 An
interesting process of cte.tive biblical imerpreution was going on here.
For according to the Gospels at the other end of the story of the earthly
life o(jesus Christ, the grave of Jesus was "a new sepulchre." belonging
to Joseph of Arimathea. where no one had ever been buried beforc. 1J The
Gospels said nothing aboUl the later history o f the sepulcher, .fler the
resurrection of jesus. just as they sa1d nothing about the later history of
the womb of Mary. But o n the strength of the "oor(us condusus" of the Song
of Songs, Jerome, who was arguably the greatest biblical scholar in the
history of the Western Church, felt justified in concluding both that there
would never be another person buried in the sepulcher and that there was
never another person born of the Virgin. It is amusing, though not
important, to note that in both cases the auxiliary role in the ~tory
belonged to a man bearing the name of Joseph.
Th, Faa That Most Resembles Chri5t's . In the language of the Old Testament,
"face" became almost a tedmical term for "person ," This usage had
appeared already in the story of creation, where, according to the Greek
translation, "God formed the man of dust of the earth , and breathed
upon his face [prosiipon] the breath of life, and the man became a living
soul. "H Throughout biblical language. and beyond it even in modern
languages. "face to face" was a way of saying "person to person. " I S The
benediction that Aaron was instructed to pronounce upon the people of
Israel applied the concept to God: "The Lord bless thee. and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee. and be gracious unto thee: The
Lord lift up his countenam:e upon thee. and give thee peace. " ~ 6 For the
God of Israel. unli ke the idols of the heathen. had neither form nor face to
"shine upon" anyone. and the anthropomorphic ascription of a "face" to
God could refer only to the special relation cemented in the covenant.
When the New Testament sought to affirm the continuity of that cove-
nant but at the same time its extension beyond the borders of the people
o f Israel, it spoke of how "the God who commallded the light to shine
out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light o f the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of]esus Christ ,"17 The face of
Jesus Christ, therefore, was seen as the divinely gi \len answer to the prayer
of the psalm "When thou saidst, See ye my face; my heart said unto thee,
Thy face. Lord. will 1 seek." 18 And so it seemed to be a valid extension of
this concept, and an application to it of the identification of Mary as
Mediatrix. for Bernard of Clairvaux and then Dante Alighieri to speak
about the face of the Virgin Mary as the one through which to view the
face of Jesus Christ, through which in turn the face of God was visible.
Visioru of the Virgin Mary . It was (rom the prominence of visions in the
religious experiences and personal revelations described in the Old Testa-
 D .\ V GHT U O f 71 01< J I

ment that the biblical warrant for the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in
ancient and modern times came. By visions and revelations of the Al-
mighty, Ahraham received the promise as well as the a\"'esome command
to sacrifice his son I saac~and then the command '·Lay 110t thine hand
upon the lad. "29 The vision of the "bush that burned with fire, and was
not consumed·' provided the setting for the "to\\:~ring text"lO of God's
self-disclosure as "r am that I am."ll Similarly, "in the day that king
Uzziah died," as the prophet Isaiah had reported, "I ~w the Lord siuing
upon a throne, high and lifted Up."31 Other prophets of Israel, too, had
been the recipient s of such visions at their inauguration into office or
later in their prophetic careers.33 For Ezekiel and Daniel, the reception of
visions iUld the communication of their content to the people or their
rulers had become the central and defining quality of their prophetic
apocalypticism.)of All th.1.t might h<lve been expected to end with the New
Testament: for it emphasized the uniqueness <lnd fin<llity of the revel<ltion
in Jesus Christ, as a result of which the stock prophetic formula "And the
word of the Lord came" to the prophet, still used for John the Baptist, was
no longer appropriate, because the Word of the Lord had come ill the
flesh, and "all the prophets and the l<lw prophesied until John."35 Nev-
ertheless, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the visions that had begun
in the old Testament did not cease in the New. In fa<:1. the apostle Peter
was described in the Book of Acts as having appropriated the prophecy of
Joel. "And it sh<lll come [Q pass in the last days. saith God, I \viU pour out
my Spirtl on all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream
d reams," as being fu lfilled now in his generation.36 In the same book of
the New Testament, Peter required a heavenly vision of unclean and
forbidden foods to cure him of his sub~ervience to kosher laws. 37 His
apostolic colleague and sometime adversary, Paul. re<:ei,red a vision of
Jesus Cbrist on the TOad to Dam<lscus that threw him to the ground,
blinded him, and t:anverted him to the "way" of the Christians whom he
had been persecuting, a vision that was follovy'Cd by others; and, a.... he
said, he "was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." 38
Je~us Christ himself had such heavenly visiom, a<.:cording to the
II DU1<;Ii T H 'H 11 0 "

Gospels, for he "beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven ... 39 During his
agony in the Garden ofGelh~emane, "there appeared an angel unto him
from heaven, strengulcning him" for the passion and death he was about
to undergo. 4o More directly relevant to our concerns here arc the visions
attendant upon the bmh of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary The most
importam of the~e was the annunciation, but the others are also of great
interest. It 'vas by a vision in a dream that Joseph was di.~suaded from
"putting her away privily" when he discovered tllat Mary was pregnant
v.ith the child Jesus, by another vision thai he was warned of the plot of
Ilerod against the threat of t~e child who was "born king of the Jews" so
tllat he took the child and Mary his mother to Egypt, and by yet another
vision that he was told when it was safe to return wilh Jesus and Mary
from Egypt to Na/.arcth.+ 1
But by rar the most abundant collection of visions anywhere in the
New Te~tament appeared in the book that now stands last in the canon,
and that has often been regarded in the subsequent tradition, whether
accurately or inaccurately is not important here, as the last to have been
written: the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse of Saint John the Divine,
attributed to the evangelist John_ By the time the panorama ofits visions
had closed, the seer of the Apocalypse had viewed nOI only "one like unto
the Son of Man, "·n but angels and beasts and heavenly cities, all march-
ing in dramatic procession across the screen ofhi~ fren7icd and ecstatic
sight. At about the halfway point of the visions came the following: "And
there appeared a great wonder in beaven; a woman clothed with the sun,
and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars."") \Nhether or not this was originally intended as a reference to the
Virgin Mary, it comported so well with the developing ways of speaking
and thinking abollt her that in the early Middle Ages, from the ~eventh 10
the ninth century in both Easl and West, it became clear thaI this "symbol
of the woman who is the mother of the Mes~iah miglll wclllend itself to
Marian interpretation, once Marian interest developed in the later Chris-
tian community And eventually when Revelation was placed in the same
canon of Scripture with the Gospel of Luke and the Fourth Gospel, the
various irnage~ of the virgin, the woman al the cross, and the woman
 DAUGHTH Of /lOt" H

who gilve birth to the Messiilh would reinforce each other...... It is worth
remembering that some centuries later, by il somewhilt similar process,
some descendants o f the Protestant Reformati o n had no compunction
about identifying the "ilngel h aving the everlasting gospel" in ilie Book of
Revel.uion with the person and ministr y o f Martin Luther. H
TM ImrrKI(ulalt Conaption. The intricate connection between the inter-
pretation of the Bible and the development of doctrine, as briefly identi-
fi ed in the preceding chapter, has worked in both directions simul-
taneously, n o less fo r Mario lagy ilian for other branches of theology. A
doctrine about her wou ld take a particular for m because, in addition to
the de\'otion to her and the speculation concerning her that were such
fertile gardens for the growth of doctrine, some pasyge of Scripture from
either the Old or the New Testament required consideration for ils beaT-
ing o n Marian teaching. Conversely, the growth o f Marian leaching out o f
these various sources made it necessary to bring the exegesis of one or
another passage, as that exegeSis may originally have evolved indepen-
dentl y of such teaching, into harmony with what Mary had come to
mean. For in the Middle Ages, particulilrly after Peter Abelard's Sic n NOli
[Yes and No] had called attention to seeming contradictions in the £radi-
lion, the harmonization of biblical or other authoritative texts became
one of the mOSt important a.~signments of scholastic theology. 46 As it was
ant icipated by Cyprian of Ca.rthage and then formulated by Ambrose of
Milan and Augustine of Hippo, the standard Western interpretation of the
words of David in the psalm "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin
did my mother conceive me, "47 had generalized the stalemellt from
David to apply It to all humanity. But that interpretation appeared to
collide with the increasingly transcendent valuation that was being
placed on the unique holiness of the Virgin Mary. It was out o f the need to
harmonize these two imperatives that the doctrine of the immaculate
conception finally emerged in Roman Catholicism.
Tht Assumption of tht MaUl Glorioso. Of illl the major pnvileges and
attributes attach ing to the person of Mary, none would seem to be more
ex traneous to the biblical account of her in the New Testament than the
assumption, which was promulgated as a dogma of the chur(;h, binding
H IH"GIITH O f In

on.all oelie\ers, bt POp<' PIUS XII on I November 1950, In the bull

Munifi(rnussUllu~ fkus. But that depended on how one weill ilbout e~tablish-
111& bl blic.ll \Yurant. For the status of Mary a\ daughter o f Zion ilnd heir of
the people ofhraei meant that for her. jtl~t as for her divine SOil, it was
permissible and even mandatory 10 ran"a(k the page.... of the Old Testa
ment for additional information .about her. After the resurrection. Christ
had appeued to the di~clples at Emmaus. and "beginning at Moses and all
tllt' prophets, he expounded unto them in illl the scripture!. the things
concerning himself. "4~ by a process that Wil'> taken to appl} legillmately
also to Mary. Thu~ the ah.<.ellr,:e of New Testament information about what
happened "when the course of her earthly life was run" was not a
~u(ficientdeterrent. Therefore the saying of the prophet tUlah that the
apostle Paul applied to the dea.th and resurrection o f Christ, "Death is
swallowed up in vict ory,"~9 could in Mumficrnummus Drus be extended to
her. Part of whal i~ heing called here the methodology of amplification
lVa~ based on the premise that because of her unique and sup reme
position among all humanity, as not only the highest of all women and
lhe highest of all human beings but the lughest of all creoltures, "higher
than the cherubim, more glorious than the serolphim," Mary (arne to be
reguded as not unworthy of any of the honors and privileges dut had.
according 10 the ScTlpture~ of both the Old and the New Testament, been
conferred on other~,
In addition, a~ the By:tantine descriptions of her dormition m.lde
clear. so two !>olints' 1i\'e~ of the Old Testament could, by following the
methodology of amplific.ltioll, he taken 10 ~upply additional d.lta .about
how, when the course of an e.lrthly life wa~ run, ~omeuJlC (,;Quid be and
had been "ass\lmcd In body and soul (Q heavenly glory." They were the brief
and enigmatiC episode of Enoch in GeJle~i .. , and the dramatic episode of
E11)ah III 2 Kings: "And Enoch walked with God. and he was not. for God
took him"; "And it came to pass that, behold. thert' appeared a
chariOl of fire, and hor~es of fire, and paTlNI them both asunder; and
Elijah went up by a \.,lml\\,lfld into heaven. And Elisha saw It, and Iw
cned, My father, my father. the chariot of Israel. and till' horsemen
thereof And he saw han lIO more."si Jewish scholarship and devollon
 PAlIGHHR 0 1' 1101'1 3S

had seized upon bO(h o f these and amplified them. In apocryphal and
apocalyptic literature Enoch's later destiny be<:ame .. topic for specula-
tion. 52 The figure of Elijah likewise hec..me the subject of lore and
legend. SJ At the Seder meal for Pa.ssover an empty place is still set for
Elijah; and according to the New Testament, Elijah appeared with Moses
at the lransfiguration of Jesus. s+
Now if these tWO men of God already in the Old Testament were
deemed worthy of the special privilege of being taken up into heaven,
with a chariO( of fire and horses o f fire, did not that constitute a form of
biblicil evidence also about Mary, w ho, by an a fortiori argument, could
be seen as having been eminently mOTe worthy of such special treatment?
For if this way to heaven had already, in at least these tWO cases, been
opened up for mere mortals, was one to say m ..t the very Mother of God
was less deserving of it than they h ..d been? The story o f Muy and
Marth.. , the sisters of Lazarus, which would eventually serve as the Gospel
pericope for the Feast of the Assumption , closed with the words, "Mary
hath chosen that good part, wruch shall not be taken away from her"; this
referred, of course, to the sister of Martha and Lazarus, but it seemed to
many to fi t the mother of Jesus even better. 5 S By a similar transpOSition of
reference, an Old Testament text such as "When he ascended up on high,
he led captivity captive, and gave gifls unto men." which had been
applied to the ascension of Christ, also seemed to suit the assumption of
Mary, through which gifts had been distributed to hu manity.56 Or when
Christ promised, "If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I
am, there shall also my servant be," there was no "man," indeed, no one
among mortals, who had served him in so special a way as Mary had; and
therefore, in accordance with his promise to her before his a..'iCension, she
had ilso followed him into hea.venY
This celebration of the Virglll Mary and the elaboration of su<:h
praises in her name coincided chronologically with the heyday of this
method of allegorical and typological biblicil mterpretation . Conversely,
the rejection of both the Marian celebration itnd the allegory came to-
gether, first in the Reformation and then in the Enlightenment itnd its
aftermath. Looking ba<:k at both developments, in the Middle Ages and in
3~ tMUGrtrH 0 1 110'>

Ule Reformation and Enlightenment, it i.~ dLfficult to avoid the tough

quesuons of loss and gain. For the allegorical and typological medLOd had
saved the Hebn:...... BLbie from its enemies and detracto r~ in the early
Christian mOl'emelH. who read it literally and rejected it. They were also
often the ones who opposed the direction in which the interpretation of
the Vitglll Mar) was moving. The VIndication of the jewish Scriptures as
part of the Chri~tian Billie comcided not only chronologically but log-
ically with this picture of Mary. Vastly different though they seemed to be
in theu approach to the Bible. therefore, a flUldamentahst literalism and a
modcrnist historiCIsm both yielded a IWO dimensional perspective III the
reading of the Bi ble. At the same lime they also led to an impoverishment
in the allitude toward Mary. Whether these went together is an intrigUing
histOrlc.al question. whIch we can only begin to answer through the study
of an, litera lure, and thought in subsequenl chapters. In what follows.
lhese and other Old Testament texts and this methodology of amplifica -
tion will figure prominently as the depository from which the develop-
ment of dOCl rille iLnd devotion would take the language it needed to
speak about Mar)'.
T,lIll 7..<:11;. duO( for S,a'II( AINn'~ ChuR h. Col"gne. I ?S8. (RIldqodlc: Rh~lm",-hfi
Bildu.;hi\ Knln)
3 The Second Eve and the Guarantee
of Christ's True Humanity

As- by one man'~ d!sobtdimcc many w~rc made sinners,

so by I~e obtdiCllcc of one 5haU many be mode righteous.
-Romans 5:19

n the second md third cenruries after Christ, during the momenLOUS

ilge o f cultural transition and spiritual-intellectual upheaval that histo-
rians call La.te Antiquity, which f"Us somewhere hetween the Hellenistic
age and the Byzantine and Medieval periods, the parallel between Mary
and Eve was a primary focus for the consideration of two major issues of
life and thought that continue to be perennial concerns in our era: the
meaning (if .my) of time md human history md the very definition of
what it means to be human. l
A central contribution of the faith of Israel to the development of
Western thought has been the interpretation of history. This is not La say
that the question oflhe meaning of human history was absent from other
cultures, for exam ple from classical Greece. II was especially in the
thoug ht of Plato that this question received detailed attention, Book IV of
Plato's Laws contains a profound analysis of the relative power of the
several forces in history: "lbat God governs all things, and that chance
[tycht] and opportunity [k(!lros) co-operate with Him in the governance of
human affairs. There is, however, a third and less extreme viL'W, that art

"
+0 HCO ~ IlHL

[ttdui] should be there also.'" 2 Seriou~ reAt'Ction all the interrelation of

those three for<':t"s, a~ Constantine Despotopoulos has pointed OUI, could
become the foundation for a far-ranging philosophy ofhi~tOry 3 It IS also
the case that the historians of ancient Athens-above all Thucydides in
the Funeral Ora lion of Pericles, but also Herodotus-carried on serious
reflection of this land as they pondered Greek history."
Nevertheless, the coming of the faith of Israel and of the Hebrew
Bible into the Greco· Roman world, which look place first through its
translation into Greek 01.1 Alexandria by Hellenistic Jew~ and then more
maSSively and more decisively through the mission and expansion of
Christianity across the entire-Mediterranean world, challenged and even-
tually transformed the prevailing views of lhe nature and purpose of the
hiSlorical proce.~s . To go on saying With Plato's Laws "that God governs all
things" came to mea.n <;Qmething radically difTerem when the histoncal
"opportunity:' or kairos, at issue wa..~ the exodus of the children oflsrad
from Egypt and the giving ofthclaw to Mmes at Sinai, or the life, death,
and resurrctlion of jesus Christ. r'Of in one sense, the belief that "God
go\"erns all things" was, If anythlllg. intensified when the word "God"
was taken to refer neither to the gods of Mount Olympus nor to the Olle
o f Platonic philosophy but to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and jacob, or to
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In spite of their profound and ftlndamentally
lrrewndlable differences, judabm and Christianity both vlew('c! human
history as a prO(;e~~ in which divine goverll;lllce was a maner of divine
initiative. Moses did nO! usc his own ingenuity to discover God while
tending Jethro"s flocks on the plalilS of Midian; rather. It wa~ God who
chose him, sought him alii, called 10 him from the burning bush, and
impo~ on him the task of leI ling Pharaoh "Let my people go!"~ Sim-
ilarly, the New Te~lament was not the account of how the upward ten-
dency of human hi~tl)ry had finally anained to the level oflhe divine. as
though human flesh had bttome the Word ofGod~ on the contruy, "In
the beginning wa!> the Word, and the Word was with God. and the Word
was God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. "6 In a
radica.l and tran~forming sense, then, hislOr}' was viewed from aboH, as the
record of the actions of the living God. As the New Testamenl put it,
"Every good gift and every perfect gift IS from above, and cometh down
from the Father of light.~, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow
of turning. "7
But that is only half the story. for at the same time the Jewish and
Christian traditions viev-:ed that same history also from below. as the record
of authentically human aClions for which human beings with free will
were to be held morally accountable. Amid the h istorical changes and
upheavals o f the Mediterranean world during the second and third cen -
tury, the sensitive spirits of Late Antiquity were pondering whether there
was a discernible meaning In human history. One of the noblest of these
sensitive spir i l~. Marcus Aurelius, who died in the year 180, put that
question of the age this way in Book XII of his MeditatiollS. writing not in
Latin (though he was emperor of Rome) but in Greek.: "There is a doom
inexorable and a law tnvioLable, or there is a providence that can be
merCiful. or else there is a chaos that is purposdess and ungoverned. If a
resistless fate, why try to struggle against it? If a providence willing to
show mercy. do your best to deserve its divine succour. If a chaos undi-
rected, give thanks that amid such stormy seas you have withm you a
mind at the helm. "8 To the consideration of those three alternatives. as
outlined by the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius. Judaism. and
then Christianity. brought a view of history as an are na in which both "a
providence that can be merciful" and a human activity that can be re-
sponsible were at work. so that neither could be ulOught of apa rt from the
o ther. ThAt was the deepest mean ing of the Hebrew word !M:rith, covenant,
in which both parlies engaged to do cenain things. even if one o f them
was the Creator ofhcilven and earth and the other was a human creature;
and for the Christian version of this authentically humAn side of the
historical dIalectic, Eve and Mary were key players. 9
There does seem to have been A practice ill early Christianity of
reading the first three chapters of Genesis as .1lllicipating the coming of
Christ. Therefore they may have cast the story of the temptatio n of Christ
by the devil as a kind of midrash on the story of the temptation of Adam
and Eve. The tempter said to Eve: "In the day ye eat thereof ... ye shall be
as godS."IO And the tempter said to Christ. who "had fasted forty days
i 2 11(0" rn

and forty nights rand] was afterward an hungered": "Ifthou be the son
of God, command that these Stones be made bread." 11 In [he Epistle to
the RomJn~, the apostle Paul had drawn the parallel: "'As by one man
[namely, Adam] ~in enteTed into the world, and death by ~In. . much
mort: the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, J~us
Christ. hath abounded untO maay."ll In ! Corinthians he developed the
parallel and the contrast in greater detail: "'And so it is written, The first
man Adam was made a li\,Hlg soul: the last Adam was made a quid:.ening
spirit. .. The first man is of the carth, earthy: the second man is the Lord
from hean.-n." t} BUl for the category of history from below, as the record
of aUlhetltically human aCllon~ for which human beings were to be held
accountable, thaI contrasting parallel between tht: First Adam as "of the
eanh, earthy" .md the Second Ad.ml, ChriSt as "the Lord from heaven,"
which has had such an imporunt career in the history ofidea~, also raised
serious problems, to some of which we shall return in lhe second half of
this chapter
For many of those problems the contrasting parallel between Eve and
Mary provided profound inSight and an imporu.nt corrective. Thus
lrenaeu~, bishop of Lyolls, who was born probably in Asia Minor about
A.o. 130 and who died abom A.D. 200, srnkingly formulated this parallel
in both of his surviving writings: in a passage from his treatise Against
Hm.si~ (written in Greek but presen'ed largel)' in a utin translation). but
also in a work that was long thought to have been penmncntl}' lost but
that wa~ discovered only in this century, and in an Armeman translation,
the EpJddXlS, or Proof of the ApostoliC Preaching. Playing ofT against each other
various clements in Genesis and in the Gospels, such a~ the Garden of
Eden versus the Garden ofGethsemane and the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil \lersus the tree of the cross, Irenaeus then came to the most
innovative and most breathtaking of the parallels:

And JUSt as it was through a virgin who disobeyed lnamely,

EVl'J that mankind was stricken and fell and died, so too it was
through the Virgin [Mary], who obeyed the word of Cod , that
mankind, resuscitated by life, received life. For the Lord
 H C OJ<D H i 41

[Christ] came to seek back the lost sheep, and it was mankind
that was lost; md therefore He did not become some o ther
formation, but He likewi~c, of her that was descended from
Adam [namely, Mary], preserved the likeness offormation; for
Adam had necessarily to be restored in Christ, that mortality
be absorbed in immortality. And Eve (bad necessarily to be restored] in
Mary, thaI a virgin, by becoming the odl'ocate of II I'irgin, should undo and
des! roy vi'lllnol disobedima: by vi'llinot obcdimct. I -+

Here was not only a parallel between the First Adam as "of the earth,
earthy" and the Second Adam, Christ as "the Lord from heaven" -thus a
contrast between the earthly and the heavenly-but a contrast between a
calam itous disobedience by someone who was no more than human,
Eve, and a saving obedience by someone who was no more than humm,
who was not "from heaven" but altogether "of the eanh," Mary as the
Second Eve. It was absolutely essential to the integrity of the twO narra-
tives that both the disobedience of Eve and the obedience of Mary be seen
as actions ofa free will, not as the consequences of coercion, whether by
the devil in the case o f Eve o r by God in the case of Mary.
When it is suggested that for the development of the doctrine of
Mary, such Christian write rs as Irenaeus in a passage like this "are im por-
tant witnesses for the state of the tradition in the late second century. if not
to.rlia," 15 that raises the interesting question of whether lrenaeus had
invented the concept of Mary as the Second Eve here or was draWing on a
deposit oflradition that hold tome to him from" earlier." It is difficult. in
reading his Agoinst Heresies and especially his Proof of the Apo5toJic PrOlchmg. to
avoid the impression that he cited the parallelism of Eve and Mary so
mauer-of-factly without arguing or having to defend the point because
he could assume that his readers would willingly go along with it, or even
that they were already familiar with it. One reason that this could be so
might have been that, on this issue as on so many others, Irenaem
regarded himsel f as the guardian and the transmitter of a body of belief
that had come to him from earlier generations, from the very apostles. 16
A modern reader does need to consider the possibility, perhaps even to
concede the po<.Slhlht), th.u in \0 rl'g.udlllg himself IrellilCII!> Illil)" J\I~t
ha\c lwen righl and lililt therefore It nlil}' al~ady h<lvc become natural in
the ~econd half of Ihe second century to look at Eve, the "mother of all
living, "17 and Mary, the mothcr of Christ, together, under\tandlllg and
Inte rpreting e<leh of the IWO most important women in human history on
the ha_~is of the other Wi th such modern, III mind, the parallelism W;tS
d r;tmatically set fo rt h by the German sculpto r Toni unl in a metal door
tn:alcd in 1958 for tlte rebuilding of the Cburch of Sankt Alh<l n in
Cologne, whith had been destroyed dUring World War 1I: in the lower
left arc Adam and Eve at the. moment of the fall, in the upper right the
Second Ad<lm and the Second Eve .11 the moment of the crucifixion and
redemption.
Once it was imroduced into the vocabulary, this dialectic o f Eve and
Mary took on a life of its own. Became 111 Latin the name EI'll spelled
backwards became Ale, tllC greeting of the angel to Mary in the Vulgate as
it was echoed by millions of soub in the prayer AYe Mari~, tlwre appeared
to be a mystical Manological Significance in the very name. Le~~ playfully
and more profoundly, the elaborations upon the disobedience o f (!\'e and
the obedience of Mary produced extensive psychological comp<lrhons
between the twO women. 111 those comparisom Ihe negative imerp reta-
tlon of woman as embodied in Eve-vulnerable, irrational, emotional,
erotic, Ii ving by the ex perience of the ~ell~e~ rather than by the mind and
the reason, and thm an easy prey for the wily tempter-propagated the
all-too-fa mihar stereot ypes of misogynous slander that have so embed-
ded themselve~ 11\ the thought and language of so many nations. ;tlso but
not only in the West. Modern polem ical writers have combed the works
of patrislic and Medieval thinkers to find these stereotypes, and they have
amassed a ma~~ive cata log Ihat has by now pas~ed from one book and
ar ticle 10 another, It is not intended as a defense of the stereotrpe,>, but il is
intcnded ;ts a nece!>sary historical corrective, to point out that t1lOse s;lme
works of patristiC and Medieval thlllker~ pre<;ented a (Oulltcrpoise to the
stereotypes, in their even more eXlcnl>ivc interpretiltions of woman as
r
embodied in Mary, the "Woman of Valor mulier fortiS]" who J!> thc de-
sccndant and vindicator of the First Eve crmhed thc head of the serpent
 H COI'I) HE 45

and vanqui~hed the deviL] 8 Historical justice requires that both poles of
the dialectic be included. When, in ParadiS( los!, John Milton, who was " an
author unmistakably opposed to Catholicism and its veneration of
Mary,"]9 nevertheless described how, In greeting Eve,

.. . the Angel Haile

Bestowed, the holy salU!iltioll us'd
Long after to ble~t Marie, ~econd Eve,20

he was quoting the angelic salutation " Ave Maria" and with it invoking the
ancient parallel that is the theme of this chapter. But he did so, as a Puritan
and Protestant, in a literary and theological context where the counter-
poise of the Catholic poncait of Mary had largely been lost. Therefore
Milton could have Adam, speilking after the fall. address an A\·e Maria to the
Virgin Mary in language that was d early intended 1O make not only Eve but
Mary know her proper place in the scheme o f human history:

... Virgin Mother, Haile,

High in the love o f Heav'n. yet from my Laines
Thou shan proceed ... . 21

Millon·s postmortem dIagnosis of the psychology of the fall of Eve, step

by painful step, is rightly celebrated as a Aawed hut brilliant character
study. But when thaI autopsy of temptation is seell in the settin g of the
history of patristic and Medieval thought about the First and the Second
Eve that had led up to Milton, it becomes dear that ParadiS( Los! empha-
sized aIle pole of the dialectic far more than the other. And the same has
been true of many and les~r writers since Mihon.
Returning to the categories of Marcus Au rehus and of lrenaeus
(who were nearly contemporaries in the ~econd century), the central
theme of the thought of Irenaeus was, in the phrase of Marcus Aurelius,
"a providence that can be merciful" and that had already proved itselfto
he merciful by bringing about a "recapitulation [anak~phoJoji5sisr ofhu-
man history, in which each successive stage o f human sin had been
restored by the successive stages of God's saving activny in (hrist. 12 But
the Stoic image of this "providence that can be mcrciful" oflcn seemed
to cart) with It overtones of deterministic necessity. anankt heimarmmr.
and to make free will problematical. That ~ort of deterministic necessity
w.l-~ by no means incompatible with profound insight into human
mOllvation and psychology, as was evident not only from Marcus Au-
relim but above all from Tolstoy.!J In hj~ famous ~econd epilogue to
War and PtoCt, Tolstoy attacked modern philo~ophies of history because of
theu lingering attachment to an untenable vIew offree will, concluding
with the well-known axiom: "It is necessary to renoum:e a freedom that
does not exist, and to recognize a dcpendcm;e [that b. a determilllsmJ
of which we ,lTe not conscious." H
The theme of Mary as Second he likewise represented a critique of,
and an ahernati\'e to, another view widely held in Antiquity and Late
Ailliquity: the .:ydical theory of history, for which. as in the philoso-
pher Porphyry, the metaphor of the wheel was the key. II was, in the
formula of Charles N. Cochrane, a student of Herodotus, a " belief in Lhe
endless reiteration of 'typical' situations." to whlch, as for example in
Augu~lIne's City of God, the response was "the faith of Christians [hat,
notwithstanding all appeilrances, human history does not consist of a
series of repetitive patterns, but marks a sure, if unsteady, advance to an
ullimate goal. As ~uch, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, exortus,
processus, tt finis." l5 For ac(ordmg toAugusune, the cydical theory was right
in discerning .. repetitive pauerns," but these did not negate the partic-
ularity of unrepeatable events and persons. which happened uniqucly,
once and only once: Adam and Eve did not continue to be created over and
over agalll, and did not yield to the seductions of tbe tempter over and over
again, and were nm driven out of the garden over ~nd over agam. But by
the process Irenaeus called recapitulation, a Second Adam did appear
in the pcrson of Jesus Christ, once and for all. to repair the damage done
by the First Adam. and a Second Eve did come in the person oftbe Virgin
Mary. as Irenaeus put it, "that a VIrgin, by becoming the advocate of a
virgin, should undo and destroy virginal disobedience by virginal obe-
{lience"1b- no t repetllion but recapitulation.
Yet the words of I Corinthians quoted earlier, "The first man is of
the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven, " 27 identified
a second concept of Late Antiquity to which the figure of Mary pro-
vided an answer: the notion o f " the d ivine man (00 thallS oner]," which,
when applied to the Christian understanding of the perwn of Jesus
Christ, led almost inescapably to the danger that "the second man
[who] is the Lord from heaven," because he was seen as more than
merely human, would come to be seen as less than completely human.
The tendency noted earlier that. in Louis Ginzbcrg's words, "just as a
pearl results from a stimulus in the shell of a mollusk, so also a legend
may arise from an irritant in the scripture, "28 was at work already in the
earliest stages of Christian thought about Jesus Christ-and about Mary.
The most important evidence fo r that tendency was the apocryphal
Gospel. the Protevangtl of james. 29 Although it was an apocryphal Gos-
pel,-one that did not achieve official status as part of the canon of the
New Testamem-it nevertheless "has dominated the develop ment o f
the Marian legend, providmg much of the basic material for Mary's
biography. "30 Some of the legends about the Virgin contained in the
Prottvtlllge/ of pmcs \vere the invio late virginity of Mary not only in con-
ception but in birth. as well as the related idea that she gave birth to
Jesus without suffering birth pangs, and lherefore the explanation that
the "brothers of Jesus" spoken of in the Gospels must have been the
children ofJoseph the widower from his first marriage. 31 Although it is
nOl clear, there are grounds to suppose chat some of these legends about
the Virgin Ma.ry may implicitly have represented as well a hesitancy to
ascribe total humanity to her divine Son, as that hesitancy was already
being expressed in o ther sources nea.rly contemporary to the Prorel'an9l'! of
pmes. lrenaeus, to whom we owe the fi rst large-scale exposition of the
parallel between Eve and Mary, is likewise one of the sources from
whom we learn that such a hesitancy ;!.mong the followers of the
Gnostic teacher Va.lentinus had led them to assert that Jcsu~ had not
been "born" of the Virgin Mary in the usual sense at all, but had
"passed through Mary as water runs through a rube," Dot only without
birth pangs but without the involvement o f tJle mother except in a
purd~ pa.<'\I\(' '>t.:1l.\.e, H Chri.\.lIan art would eventuall} counter th i" ten
dency hy w; portra}al .. or the jlu'gllant MaryH II was likewise in
rnpon~e to tllis GnoMic threat tt) the true humanity or Jc~u~, as well
a~ III defense of Ihe unique positiOn nol only of Jcw~ but of Mary in
the history of sah'.ltIon, that lrcnaCI.!S found this decisive role for the
Virgll1.
The mo~t important intellectual struggle of the fir"t fivc centuries of
Chnstian histOrY- indeed the most importam illtellectual .. truggle in
all of ChrislJan histor}'-took plat;(: in response to the question of
whether 1 he divi Ile in Jesus Christ was idclllical with God the Creator. J-l
For the answer 10 that (hilllcnge, too. was Mar)". defined 110\\ ilS The-
Olokos and Mother of God.n Although that challenge to the full dcily
of the Son of God had been present from the earlicst times of the
Christian mo\·ement . .1\ hccomcs dear from the iteration of the temp-
ler\ question "If thou he the Son of Goo"j6 by other douhters. Ihe
speCial chalkngc in Ihe second and durd CClHuries wa~ the one that
(arne from the oppO~lte direction, questioning whether the diville man
was trul} "man" in Ihe fullest !'.Cnsc of lhat word or whether In one way
or another he needed to be studded from the tOlal implicallons of an
authentic hmuanHy. Many movcment:. of Christian though t and devo-
lion in the ~et'ond and third centu ry thai were eventually lumped to-
gether and condemned as '"Gnostic" shared this outlook, which came
to be called "Docctl~m"'
from the Greek verb dohin, "to seem." meaning
tha t the humanity was "merely apparent"; L"Onvef:.d}; the earliest
thinkers to be commended as "orthodox" were tho:.c who stro\'e to
vlIldtcate. against these "'Docetic·' ilnd "Gnostic" tendenctc\, the fully
human dimension of Ihe life and pcrson of Jesus.
Although many I11dlViduill incident~ 1Il lhe Gospels became battle-
grounds for tllb conRict-for cxample. the '·er)" idea ofhi~ Colling and
drinking in a human fashionJ7~therc were IWO junctures in Il\.~ life 011
which both ~idc~ c.om:;cntratcd. the natnity and the cruCifixion; in the
words of the Apostles· Crt.."Cd, "born of the Virgin Mary. suffered under
POrllIU~ Pilate." Wolfgang Amadcw; Mozart, in the last sacred Lomposi-
lion he completed before his death, and certainly OIlC of the mOM
exquisite and profoundly moving as \vcll. set to music the affirmation
that it had been these two events, "being truly born of the Virgin Mary
[mt nmwn de Maria Virginr]" and "being truly sacrificed on the cross for
mankind [(rerr) immoJotum in crUCf pro homin~]," that guaranteed both
human salvation and the presence of "the true body ( vnum corpus]" in the
Eucharist-and he did so by addressing another AI'( to that "true body"';
Are wrwn corpus. 38 The suffering and death on the cross was, to ooth sides,
evidence of a nature that was, in Nietzsche's phrase. "human. all tOO
human." Suffering was there regarded as unworthy of a truly divlOe
nature; for by common consent (and, incidentally, without much explicit
discussion), the divine nature was regarded as haVing the essential quality
of being beyond the capacity for suffenng or change, the quality defined
by the Greek philosophical term apatheia, Impassabihty, and incorporated
into the Christian doctrine ofGod.l9 One of the leacling Gnostic teachers,
Basilides. was reported to have taken this revulsion at the idea of attribut-
109 suffering to the divine Christ so far that, on the basi~ of the report of
the Gospels that on the way to Calvary the Roman soldiers "as they led
[Christ] away, laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrelllan, commg au{ of the
country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after
Jesus .....0 he claimed thaI Simon of Cyrene had been substituted for Jesus
and cruafied instead, sparing Christ the ignominy of the crUCifixion and
death. 4 J Summarizing the response of an early ell ristim wriLer, Ignatius
of Antioch. to such ideas. therefore, Virgmia Corwin has said: "That the
preaching of the cross and death of Christ continued to be a 'stumbling-
block to unbelievers' (Eph. IB.I) need not surprise us, and IgnatiUS
Indicates why the docelic thinker.:; who were his opponems were repelled
by il. In Ignatius' mi.nd it was the final and incontrovertible proof
that Christ truly became man and entered the scene of history. ""2 It seem~
La have been at least pardy \vith this controversy III view that so many
versions of the early Christian creed~, intluding the Apostk~' Creed and
the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. incorporated the phrase "LUlder
Pontius Pilate" intO the recital of the sufferings of Christ, thereby Idemi-
fying him as a truly human person and characterll.lng the suffering as a
truly historical event that took place not in a mythical or Docetic "once
upon ... ume" hUt ... t a particular place on the m ... p ilIld time III the hIstory
of the Roman cmpire, ~ 3

But Pontius pilate wa<; on I) one oftlw two drJlllati\ personae men-
tioned in the <:.reeds. and the second of them. The Olher. and the first
mentioned. was the Virgin Mary; for the other decisive event on which the
true humanity ofChris\ depended W<lS th,ll he was. as the Apostles' Creed
,aid ... born of the Virgin Mary.·· a formula that appeared in variOlls slighLl~'
differing pe rmlilatiom even more often than ··under PontlU\ Pil ... tc."H
Here agJin. tilt' Docctic camp'l lgn to shield him from the implications of
hemg fully hUlllan had found various ingenioUJ; exphnadons. includlllg
the <;imile that at his birth he had passed through the body of Mary as water
passes through a pipe. without affecting the medium and (more impor-
tant) withom being affected by the mcdium.4~ The response to thi"
metaphor. and to the theory underlying H. w.)s to emphasize his genuine
birth from the Virgin Mary. For. .)s the founder of Christian ulin.
Terrullian. put il. writing against MHcion. '·All these illusions of an
Imagina ry corporeality in [hi~ version of Chri~t I. Marcion adopted with
this view. that his nativity also might nOt be furnished with any evidence
from his human substance." To the contrary. Tertullian continued. "Smce
He was 'the truth: lie was flesh: since He was flesh. He was born. .. He
is no phantom.'·46 The logle of the argumCTlI was clear, whether one
.lccepted the \ubstance of it or not: Salvation depended on the true and
complete hUlm.nity of Christ in h l ~ life ;lnd death; that true and complete
humanity dcpt!nded in tllrn on his having been Inlly born: and his true
birth in its tllrn dCpt!nded on hi.<; having had a mother who was truly and
completely human. And if. as L1le case argued by irenaeliS ;lnd others
maintained, it was the \·oluntarr and virginal obedience ofM;lf}' by which
the volunt.)rr and virginal disobedience ofE\"C was undone and sel Jfight.
Mary hecame. by that vollintary obedience. both the Second Eve and the
principal guarantee of Ch ri~t's humanity.
As it wa~ expounded in prose and cspeciall} in poelr}" all of this
frequently lOok the rhetOric... l fo rm of saturation with di ... leclics and
reveling in antithesis, ;1\ 1Il the line~ of a later British metaphysical poet
 HCO ND fV£ Sl

of the Baroque period, Richard Crashaw, a Puritan who converted to

Roman Catholicism :

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span!
Summer in Winter, Day in Night!
Heaven in earth, and God in man!
Great little One! whose all-embradDg birth
!.ifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth- H

until the Virgin M.rry could be seen a.<; Our Lady of the Paradoxes:
Virgin but MOther, Human Mother but Mother of God.
As herself a creature, she was as weU the one through whom the
Logos Creator had united himself to a created human nature. 48 In the
striking formula of Gregory of Nyssa. contrasting the First Adam with
the Second Adam, "the first time. [God the Logos] took dust from the
earth and formed man, [but] this time he took dust from the Virgin and
did not merely form man, but formed man around himsel("49 Al-
though the Arianism that Athanasius combated is usually (and cor-
rectly) seen as the denial of the full and complete divinity of Christ.
ma.ny earlier heresies abom ChTlst-and. at least according to the
charge of some interpreters,'O Arianism itself-were guilty of denying
his fuJI and complete humanity. Beginning already with the teachings
against which the later writers of the New Testament had dire<:ted their
emphasis on the Visibility and the tangibility of the human "flesh" of
Christ. various early interpreta.tions of the figu re of Christ had striven {Q
exempt him from the loathsome concreteness that flesh is heir to. And
since nothing about human flesh was more concrete, iilld to many of
them nothing was more loathsome. than the processes of human pro-
creation and birth, they were especially intent on rescuing his humanity
fro m an involvement in those proces.ses. This ineVitably made Mary lhe
primary focus of their reinterpretations, as well as of the orthodox
replies. Not only had sollle of the Gnostics said thac Christ "received
nothing from the Virgin," ~l but (also according to the report of John of
Damascus, apparently quoting Irc!1acu~)H thc)' had said that he passed
through the body of Mary as "through a channel [dia sOlenos]," that is,
without hemg affected by the passive medium of his mother. This
would appear to have been an exaggerated form of a notion. wide-
spread in antiquity. thaI even in a normal conception and birth the
mother functioned onl)' as the '·soil" for the child, which was produced
by the ·'seed [spermo J" of the father. '>3 In response to this Gnostic view
o f Mary, the carhest orthodox theologians had in~isted that although
Christ had been conceived in a supernatural manner without the agency
of a human fath er, he was ··truly [aJcthos] born," in the same manner as
,
all other human beings are. H
Even earlier, as has been noted in chapter
1, when the apostle Paul had wanted to assert that the Son of God, who
had come "in ule fulnes~ of time," had participated in an authentic
humanity. he said that he was ·'born of a woman. ·'55 though apparently
\vithout implying thereby any explicit reference to the Virgin Birth or to
the person of the Virgin Mary herself.
Having taken over the parallel from the Greeks, Western theologians
were eventually able, as mentioned earlier, to take advantage of a verbal
coincidence in the Latin language to play with the palindrome A,dh~.

The First Eve had been, according to the etymology of the Book of
Genesis, '·the mother of all who live [mmer panton ton wilton]," and there-
fore the Sertuagint read: "And Adam called the name of his wife Ufe
[ZotJ," rather than "Eve."s6 So the Second Eve, too, had become the
new mar her of all who believed and who lived through believing in her
divine Son.
Ep;pl»ny llid Aillbl UIlO EII)'P!, fiflh-~n'ury mos~1C_ s.nt~ :\lm~ :-hllgiorc, Rom~
(Allum I Ar! Rewum~, NY)
4 The Theotokos,
the Mother of God

And fElisabttb J spake out with a laud l"Oice, and said, ...
And whence is this to me, thaI tht mother of my lord should come to mr?
-Luke 1:42-43

hroughoUl history, and especially during the fourth and fifth

centuries, the basic category for thinking about Mary was that of para-
dox: Virgin and Mother; Human Mother ofOne who is God, Theotokos.!
For the most comprehemive-and, in the opinion of some, the most
problematic-of all the terms invellled for Mary by Ectstem Christianity
was certainly thal title Theotokos. It did nOt mean simply '·Mother of
God," as it waS usually rendered In Western languages (Mottf Dn in Latin,
and thence in the Romance languages, or Muua GoUts in German) , hut
more precisely and fully "the one who gave birth to the one who is God"
(therefore Bogorodico .rnd its cognates in Russian and other Slavic lan-
guages, and, more seldom but more precisely, Deipora even in Latin).
Although the linguistic history of the tille remains obscure, it does seem
to have been a term of Christian cOinage rather than, as might super-
ficially seem to have been the case, an adaptation to Christian purposes of
a name originally given to a pagan goddess. 1 The name appears in some
manuscripts of the works of Athanasius. l Yet the textual evidence leaves
ambiguous the question of how often Athanasius did use the title The-
olOkos for Mary. ~ In any event. il rccci\'CS negative corroboration from its
appearance, during the lifetime o f Athanasius, in the attacks on the
church by the emperor Julian "the Apostate." who criticir.ed the supersti-
tion of the Christians for invoking the Theotokos. 5
In the fifth century, the fear of mingling the divine and hurniln
natures in the person of Christ led Nestorius, p.uriarch of Constantinople,
to stipulate that because it was only the human nature that had been born
of her. Mary should be called not Theotokos, which gave the blas-
phemous impression that she had gl\'en birth to lhe divine nature itself
and which there fore sounded like the title of the mother deities of
,
paganism. but Christotokos. "the one who gave hirth to Ch ri H." In 43 I.
slightly more than a cennuy after the Christian rehgion had finally be-
come a legal cull [ftligio !ieita] through the Edict of Milan. a council of
Christian bishops met in the city of Ephesus-which had been the center
of a flourishing devotion to the Greek goddess Artemis or Diana.6 It WilS
in Ephesus, ina sce ne graphically described in the Acts of the Apostles.
that her devotees had Tioted against Saint Paul and the other Christian
apostles with the cry "Great is Diana oC lhe Ephesians!" 7 There, assem-
bled in the great double church o f Mary, whose ruins can still be seen,
they solemnly proclauned that it was an obligation binding on a.1I be-
lievers to call Mary Theotokos, making dogmaticillly offiCi al what the
piet y of orthodox believers had already affirmed, in the words of the first
Anarhtm<ltism of Cyril of Alexandria against Nestorius: "If anyone does not
confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore (hat the holy \1rgin
is the mother ofGud (Theotokos] (for she bore in a Aeshly way the Word
of God become flesh), let hIm be anathema. "BIt was, moreover, in honor
of the definition by the Council of Ephesus of Mary as Theotokos that
right after the council Pope Sinus III built the most important shrine to
Mary in the West, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome: its
celebraled mosaic of the annunciation and the epiphany gave anislic
fo rm 10 that definltion.1I A few centurtes later John of Damascus would
SUlllrnarl.... e the orthodox case for this special mle: "Hence it is witb
Justice and lruth that we call holy Mary Theotokos. For this name em-
braces the whole mystery of the divine dispensation rIO mysfErion tes
 T HIOTO ( O! S7

oikonomiosJ. For if she who bore him is the TheolOkos, assuredly he who
was born of her is God and likewise abo man . ... The name {The-
atokos] in truth signifies the one subsistence and the two natures and the
two modes of generation of our Lord Jesus Christ ." 10 And, as he argued
elsewhere, that is what she was on the icons: Theotokos and therefore the
orthodox and God-pleasing substitute for the pagan worship of de-
mons.! 1 Atthe same time, the defenders of the icons insisted that "when
we worship her icon, we do not, in pag<ln fashion (HtUaukos). regard her
<lS a goddess {thton] hut as the Theotokos." 11
That had come a long way even from the consideration of her as the
Second Eve. II was probably the greatest quantum leap in the whole
history of the language and thought aocmt Mary, as we are consideri ng it
in this book. How and why could she have come so far so fast? Alieas[
three aspects of an answer to that historical question are suggested by the
texts: the growth of the title Theotokos; in connection with the title. tbe
rise of a liturgical observance called "the commemoration of Mary" ; and,
as a somewhat speculative explanation for both the title and the festival,
the deepening perception that there was a need to identify some totally
human person who was the crown of creation, once that was declared to
be an inadequate identification for Jesus Chnst as the eternal Son of God
and Second Person of the Trinity. 13
The origins of the title Mother of God are obscure. In spite of the
diligence of Hugo Rahner and others, Ii- there is no altogether incontest-
able evidence that it was used hefore the fourth century, despite New-
man's categorical claim that "the title ThroIOCOS. or Mother of God. was
fam iliar [Q Chrbtians from primitive times." I S What is dear is that the
first completely authenticated instances of the use of this title came from
the city of Athanasius, Alexandria. Alexander. his patron and immediate
predecessor as bishop there, referred to Mary as Theotokos in his encycli-
cal of circa 3 J 9 about the heresy of Arius. 16 From various evidence.
including the taunts ofJuli an the Apostate from a few decades later about
the term TheotOKOS. cited t!ariier, it seems reasonable to conclude that the
title already enjoyed widespread acceptance in the piety oflhe faithful at
Alexandria and beyond . The history does not in any direct way corrobo-
ute the f~(;Il e Il1(Jdern thcoric~ about the "mother god(leS!.e~" of Gracco-
Roman pagani~m and tll('lr ~lIpposed signifi(alH:e for the development of
Chrbtian Mariol ogy '7 For the term Themoko, was app.Hendy an origi -
nal Christian creation that arose in the language of Christian devotion to
her a~ the mother of the divine SdI'lor and that e\'entually re<:ei\'ed it~

thNlogltal j\l~tification from the chun..h's darificalioil of \\ hal was im-

plied by tbe ortbodox wllnes~ to him.
ThaI )mlificalion was supplied by Athanasiu~, whose lifelong obses-
sion it II'as to insist that to be the Medlal()r between Creator and creature
Christ the SQn of God had to be God in the full and uneqUIvocal seme
of the word "through God alone can God be known," as the refrain of
many 0rlhodox church fathers put it. It chd appear "inchoatively"'R in
his summary ~tatcmenl of "the scope and character of Hoi) Scnpture,"
which "contaim a double account [dipfe(JIOfl9(lia 1of the Savior. (hat he was
God forever and is the Son, heing Logos ancl Radiance and Wi\clom of the
I:ather: and that afterward~, taking Aesh of a Virgin, Mary the Theotokos,
for us, he was made man."19 BUI the lheological explanation of thi~
"double a<.:count" Ivent well beyond this summar), StAtement of the
creed. Most of the re<:cnt contrm'ersy About the theology of Atlunasius
has dealt with the questiOn of whether he ascribed a human ~oul to Christ
or whether he shared the "Logo~-plllS-fiesh" schema oC the in<.:arnation,
which ume to be identified with tile ApoJlinarist heres)'!O That contro ·
vcrs)' has ~()l11ellmes [end<'<f 10 obscure, however, his pioneering work In
the elaborAtion of me "communkAtion of the properties, " 21 the princi-
ple Ulat, as iI consequence of the inca.rnation and of the union of the
divine and the human nature in the one. person of Jesm Chrbt, it WAS
legttimAte to predicate human propcrnes of the logos And divine proper-
ties of the man Jesm, for eumple, to spe_k of ·'the hlood of the Son of
God" or "the blood of the Lord" or even (accordlllg to some manllScripL~
of the NC\v Te~lamenl) "the blood of God, " 22
As A1or\ Grillmelcr has suggested, it was not umil the debilte.~ over
the term TIleolOkos in the first quarter of the fifth century "that [he
discussion of Ihe so-<.:alled communicotio idiomalum in Christ began in ear-
nest," ewn though language suggestive of it "had been employed since
 TKt OTO I OS S9

the apostolic age without further thoughl." 2j The place of Athanasius in

its development seems, however, to be somewhat more important than
Grillmeier made it. Grillmeier pointed to passages in which Athanasius
"obviousJy regards the Logos as the real personal agent in those acts
which are decisive for redemption, the passion and death of Christ, " and
he cited "expressions which describe the redemptive activity of the
Logos according to the rules of the communicotio idiomotum." But in a long
passage in his first Oration Against th~ Anaru, Athanasius discussed in detail
the question of the propriety of ascribing change and exaltation to the
divine Logos, who could not be changed and did not need to be exalted .
His answer was a paraphrase of the language of the New Testament about
"Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, .. . took upon him the
form of a servant": H "As he, being the Logos and eXisting in the form of
God, was always worshiped; so, being still the same though h e became
man and was called Jesus, he nevertheless has the whole creation under
foot, and bending their knee to him in this name DesusJ, and confessing
that the incarnation of the Logos and his undergoing death in the flesh
has not bappened against the glory of his Godhead, but 'to the glory of
God the Father.' "25
Therefore when Athanasius spoke of the Logos "taking flesh of a
Virgin, Mary the Theotokos, "26 he was echoing the language of popular
devotion: but he had already begun to provide the title with the very
rationale that was to help defend it against attack half a century after his
death. As Newman suggested in The Arians of th~ nlUrth Century. the people
were orthodox even when the bishops were not.27 In his use of the
Theotokos, as in his use of other titles and m etaphors, Athanasius aligned
himself with the orthodoxy of popular devotion and vindicated it. The
idea of lex orandi 10: crtdtndi, that implidt in Christian worship there was a
normative doctrinal content, which needed to be made explicit, seems to
have been formulated shortly after the time of Athanasius,28 but he
evidently worked on the basis of some such idea.
The normatiYe content of devotion also bec.une evident in another
context, when Athanasius used "the commemoration of Mary" to vindi-
cate the orthodoxy of his doctrine. He did so in at least two of his
60 iIUOTOKO~

wrltings_ The more important of these is his epistle to Epu_tetlls, which

achieved wide circulation In Greek, Latin. Syriac, and Armenian in later
centuries and was quoted in the decrees of both the Council of Ephesus in
431 ilnd the Council ofChalcedon in 45 \. 29 11 seems to ha\'e been called
forth by the recrudescence, after the defeat of Arianism. of the ancient
Doceric heresy, which denied the true and full humanity of lc.sus or
claimed that he did not have a genuinely human hody,30 Some were even
going so far as to maintain that the body of Christ was of one essence
[homoousiOll] with the Logos. 3 I This new species of Docetism, about
whose teachings scholars still do not agree, is oflen seen as a forerunner
of the ApolHnarist theology.-ln his response Athanasius argued Oil the
basis of "the divine Scriptures" and of the decrec.s of "the fathers assem-
bled at Nicaea" and accused the neo-Docelists of having outdone even
the Anans: "You have gone further in impiety than any heresy. For if the
Logos is of one c.ssence wnh the body, lhat renders superfluous the
commemoration and the office of Ma ry [perilte If:; Marias he mneme Kui he
chrcia]. "32 And in his epistle to Maximus, combating the doctrine that the
Logos had become man as a necessary consequence of his nature, Ath-
anasius declared again : "If this were so, tbe commemoration of Mary
would be ~uperfluous,"31 Athanasius's theological pOint seems quile
clear: Mary was again, as she had been to the anti-Gnostic fathers, the
guarantee of the true humanity of Jesus Chrisl. 3 ·1
What is less clear is the precise character of the" commemoration" to
which Athanasius was referring. If the Greek word mnemc meant no more
than "memory," as it did in the New Testament and el~ewhere, J~ then he
would have been arguing thatlhe remembrance of Mary, as enshrined for
example in tbe creed or in memorial prayers, necessarily implied that the
humanity of Christ took liS beginning from her and had not preexisted
from eternity. But mnemc sometimes had a technical sigmncance in the
formation of the Chr istian calendar, referring to the annivenary of a saint
or maIlyr. 36 Martin Jugie, in his early study of the first festivals devoted to
Mary III both the liast and the West, contended that the mncme of Mary
referred \0 in early fifth -century documents was not the anniversary of
her death or "dormition [koimesis]"37 but of her "!lamity," which may
 TH IO TOK OS 61

have mea nt her entr y imo heaven. 38 In his late r and massive stud y
of the
dea th and assu mpt ion of the Virgin he repeated. corr ecte d. and amp
lifie d
this argu men t. 39 For our purp oses , however. this prob lem is seco nda
ry to
the fund ame ntal one . Is tes Marias he mntrnt a refe renc e to som e Mar iolo
gi-
cal festival? The re is som e evid enc e to sup port the exis tenc e of a festi
val
called the mneme of Mary and celebrated on the Sunday after Chr istm
as, "0
but the evid enc e does not go back quit e as far as Athanasius. Neverth
eless.
both that evid enc e and his lang uag e seem to mak e it plau sibl e that suc
ha
com mem orat ion of Mary was bein g kept already dur ing his time and
that
h is argu mem was base d upo n it.
He wou ld then have bee n argu ing that ther e was no justification for
a
festival com mem orat ing the Virgin Mary the The otok os if she had
not
played a pan in the hist ory of salvation. She bclo nge d to the New
Testa-
men t. not to the Old, and was not rem emb ered , as the saint~ of anc
ient
Israel wer e, as a prop het of the com ing of Christ. Rather. she
had a
func tion or office. a cnrtia. as the cho sen and com mis sion ed ODe thro
ugh
who m alon e the unc reat ed Logos rece ived his created humanity. And
that
chreia or minisU"y WAS ccle brated wilh grateful rem emb ranc e in the obs
er-
vance of the mneme or com mem orat ion of Mary. The chrda was a give
n fact
of the hist ory of salvation, the mllane a given fact o f Christian obs erva
nce .
80lh the cree d of the chun::h and the cale nda r of the chu rch.
then .
attested the doc trin e that the hum an naLOre of Chr ist was a crealUre
, JUSt
as they attested the doc trin e that the divine natu re of Chr ist was
not a
creature; and the sign of the bon d betw een Chr ist the crea ture
and
man kind the creature was "the com mem orat ion and the office of Mar
y."
whi ch wou ld have bee n sup erfl uou s ifm e hum anit y of Chr ist had
bee n
som e sort of com pon ent o f his preexistence as the Logos of God
. Al-
thou gh it is und enia ble, from the evidence, that Athanasius nev er wor
ked
out as satisfactory a form ula for the imp lica tion s o f the full and
true
hum anit y of the Lord as he did for those of his deity. it is equally dea
r that
both aspects of the ,. dou ble acc oun t"" I wer e vou che d for by the auth
or-
ity of the orthodo x faith.
In the com pos itio n and identificatio n of that authority. the wor ship
and dev otio n of the chu rch were seen as an imp orta nt elem ent of
the
61 TltE OT O ~ OS

definition of wlm Athanasius. in the conclusion of the Epistle to Epic-

teLUS. called "tlle conf~sion of that faith which is both devout and
orthodox [he homologia tes (uS(oous kai orthodoxous pisleOS]."42 If Mary was
Theotokos. as the language of Christian devotion declared she was, the
relation between the divine and human in Jesus Christ had to be such as
to justify this apP<lrently incongruous term; hence the doctrine of the
"communication of the properties." If Mary had the "orfice" of clothing
the Logos in an authentic and therefore a created humanity, as in the
"commemoration of Mary" the practice of Christian devotion declared
she had . no aversion to flesh ,and blood could be permitted to vitiate the
doctrine of the incarnation. To qualify as a dogma of the church. then. a
doctrine had to conform nOL only [0 r.he apostolic tradition. as set down
in Scripnue and in such magisterial witness~ as the decrees of the
Council ofNicaea. but also to the worship and devotion oftlle Catholic
and ;<postolic church.
The cTNturely st;<1US of Mary in relation to Christ indicated yet an-
other line of development, the task of specifying more accurately the
proper subject for predicates that had been misplaced by heresy. Most of
the controversies in the fourth cemury dealt with the propriety of predi-
cations such as homoousios or Theotokos. But the literature of the controver-
sies also suggested. or at least hinted at, a definition of heresy as mis-
placed predication. tu which the eventual orthodox answer was a more
precise specification of the subject. Only at the Council of Ephesus and
beyond w as this answer supplied. but by hindsight it may seen in an
earlier st;<ge of the development in the Arian controversy.
The Arian heresy. in the words of Henry Gwatkin. "degraded the
Lord of Saims to the level of his creatures,"43 What it ascribed to Christ
was more than it was willing 10 ascribe 10 any of the saints but less than it
ascribed to the supreme Deity. The Arian doctrine concerning the saints is
not easy to assemble from the fragments. though we know that the Thalia
of Arius spoke of "the elect of God. the wise men of God. his holy
sons. " H There is some evidence that certain legends of the saints ""~re
handed down through Arian sources.45 We are considerably better in-
formed about the Arian view of the relation between Christ and the
 1HJO T O[ OS 63

!'..lints. According to the: lette r of the Arians to Alexander of Alexan

dria,
the Logos wa s" a perfect crea ture of God, but not as one of the
crea-
ture~, "H, sinc e he was the crea ture thro ugh who
m God had mad e all the
othe r creatures; ther efor e the "sup erio rity " of thi~ creaHlre ove r all
the
othe r crea ture s was that he had been created directly whe reas they
had
bee n created thro ugh him . 'l7 In his preexistence, then , the Logos was
the
perfect crea ture . BlIt in his eart hly care er he btcamt the perfect crea
ture .
Arianism seem ed in its pIcture of the man Jesu sCh rist to have com bine
da
de nial of the pres enc e of a hum an sou l in him411 with the doc trin e of
Paul
ofSamo!'..lta tha t he had mad e him self wor thy of elevation to the stat
us of
"Son of God " by his "mo ral progres.<; (prokOpe)."4!1 The Arians wer
e re-
pute d to have taug ht that God had elec ted him "bec ause of his
fore-
kno wle dge " that Christ wou ld not rebel against hun but wou ld, "by
hIS
care and self-discipline [dia epimeleian kai osUsin)." triu mph ove r his "mu
ta-
ble natu re" and rem ain faithful. ~o Because me son ship of the Logos
was a
func tion of his perfect crea ture hoo d and the son ship of the man Je$ll
S was
a con seq uen ce of his perfect obe dien ce. the differen(;e betw een his
son -
ship and that of me saints was qua ntit ativ e rather than qualitative,
for by
thei r own perfect obe dien ce they cou ld eventually attain to a part
icip a-
tion in the sam e sonship,
Now thIS Arian doc trin e of part icip atio n by the sainLS in the son ship
of Chr ist had a cow uerp art in the Alhanasian doc trin e of part iupa
tion
thro ugh " divi niza uon ": "Because of our rela tion ship to his body we,
too,
have be(;ome God's tem ple, and in con seq uen ce are mad e God's son
s, in
suc h a way that eve n in us the lord IS now bein g wor<>hiped."s,
The
son ship was due not in the first instance to the imit atio n of Chr ist
by the
saints but essentially to tran sfor mat ion by Christ. who . in the fam
ous
Athanas ian form ula, be<:ame hum an in ord er that the saints mig ht
be-
com e divine. n Athanasius con tend ed that suc h a tran sfor mat ion
and
divi niza tion was po~sible only because the Logos was Creator rath er
than
creature. The SaVIor cou ld med iate berw een God and hum anit y
only
because he him self was God . He was nOl pro mot ed 10 a new
SlatuS
because he was the greatest of the saint~ but was re.<;tored to his eter
nal
statuS after perf orm ing on ea.rth the mi~ion for whi ch he had bee
n sem
M TH!OTO( OS

lnlO the Re,h. \low the saults became ~n\ of God, creature~ III whom the
Creator dwelt ~o fully that he could be worr;hipctl in them. That .m,ms is
what Arianism tried to make of Christ, a creature in whom the Creator
dwelt so fully that God could be WOr~hlped in him, tht' highl:t>t of the
saints and therefore the mediator between God and humanIty,
By drawing the line between Creator and creature and confessing that
the Son of God belonged on God's side of that line, Ni(;cne orthodoxy
made possible and ne<.:essary a qualitau\'e distinction between him and
l'lIen the highe.~t of ~alJlL~, between his uncreated mediation and their
created lIledialion.D Now lhal the ,ubje(;t of the Arian se ntences was
<.:hanged, what was 10 become of all the predicates? What we have seen so
far IIllhe Mariology of Athanasius would seclllto indicate that. in a M:nse
quite different from that implied by Harnack, "what lhe An am had taught
about Christ, the onhodox now taught ahaut Mary,"H so LIla! these
creaUlrc1y predicates did not hclong to Jesus Chrisl, the Son of God, but to
the Virgin Mar y, tht' Mother of Gad . The portrait of Mary in the Letter to the
Virgins of Athanasius would fit the Arian descrip tion of the Son of God,
who "was <.:hosen because. though mutable by natu re, hi~ painstaking
charaCler ~uffered no deterioration" At h.lna ~ius spoke of her "progress~
1I1g" and may even have been using here the word prokop(. moral progress,
which the Arian~ had used ofChrist_}S Her progress, a.ccording to Ath-
anasius, inllolved ~ truggl cs with doubts and cvil thoughts, but ,he tri-
umphed over them .lnd could lhw, become "the image" a.nd "the model"'
of lIirginny for all tho~c who stro\·e fo r perfection, in shor t. thc highest of
lhe saims. The devotionall.mguage (Theotokos. '"Mother of God") and
the devotional practice (mntmt, "commemoration'") which. as we halle
noted earlier, lay behind the Mariology of Athanasius werc the prime
I!lstance in all his thought o f the doctrine that even a creature could
become deserving of wor,hip by vIrtue of the indwelll11g of the Creator_
The hymn from which Athanasills may have been quoting the Il(le Theo-
lokas. the Greek onginal of the wdl-lmown Latin Sub tuum praesidlUm, was
hkewise the prime instance of such worshlp.~6
[I remained for further controversy to (ail forth further clarification
of lhe doctrine. but In the light of that contrOllcrsy we may sec already in
 THEOTf)~05 6S

Athanasius that it was a development by the specification of the subject.

When the development did come , it came first and most fully in the
Greek-speaking East, where the ascetical.a.nd devotion al presuppositions
of the doctrine of Mary were present long before they .a.ppeared in the
West.
Ro<;',"'~r) I\lumli. Ma,). wme ,,,,ll'llrrc. Eo" AfrK. (Rcp,mlffi fm'l1 Arno ld,,,,.,,,,.
C~'h!r.n i\r1 ,n III, "a w ....IG. CO", '",I,~ I'uhlid",,~ H()u,",. I 91>7)
5 The Heroine of the Qur' an
and the Black Madonna

Black om I and NtlUliful.

-Sona of Songs 1:5 (translation by Marvin Pope)

De of the most profound and most persiSteni roles of the Virgin

Mary In history has heen her function as a bridge builder to oilier
traditions, other cuiLUres. and other religions. From the Latin word for
"bridge builder" came the term pontift.'(. a priestly title in Roman pagan-
ism. In the form ponliflX maximll5 it became one of the term s in the cult of
the di vine Roman emperor, and for that reason It was disavowed by
Christian emperors already in the fourth cemury. Not long thereafter it
was taken up by Christian bishops and archbishops. and it did not be-
come an exclusive title for the bishop of Rome until conSiderably later. I
Bm the concept of a pontifu, as distinct from lhe term, had far wider
implications. Ultimately iL applied to all those concepts and personalities
whose fundamemal message and significance could be expressed better
by saying both/ and than by saying either/Of. One such was monasticism,
which had appeared in several separate traditions and had manifested in
them some striking similarities, as well as historic differences. Z Efforts 10
cultivate exchange especially between Christian and Buddhist monasti-
cism have made con~iderable headway in recent decades. and Thomas

"
Mt!rtoll, Trappi~t monk and spiritual author, was engaged in such a
"boundary Journey" when he died in J968 ,1 Whenever the iuuitheses of
either/or at all \L'Veis have threatened to erupt into a holocaust, there has
been a desperate need to idelllify and to cultivate such lmdge-building
concepts and personalities.
Perhaps no antithesis has been more far-reaching III its imphcatlons
than the relation between the rest of the world and what ha~ been called
"Islamdom" (as a counterpart to "Christendom "), which now numbers
nearly one billion believers. And therefore this genen.1 need for bndge
builders has taken on a special urgency and pOlgnancy in tile attempt to
underst.md the religion of the prophet Muhammad and the mes\age of
the Qur'in, concerning which the fundamental ignoran{.'e of otherwise
well-educated Westerners i~ not only aby~mal but frigh.ening. The foun -
dation of the Islamic fanh CAme in a series of incandescent divine self-
discl05ures, beginning in abom the year 6 I 0 and cominulllg to near the
end of the prophet5 life in 632,~ These revelation~ are, to orthodox
Muslim belief. the very voice of God. In them Muhammad was desig-
nJited "a benevolence to the creatures of the ,",'Orld," whose message it
' ..... 5 to say, "This is ,,,hat has been revealed to me: 'Your God h one and
only God.' "5 Muhammad memorized many of these ~ayings, as did a
multitude of his followers; other sJiyings seem to have been wTltten down
right ;tway, In whatever medium was at hand. The collecting of the
Qur'in is anributed to Abu Bah, the first caliph, and the standard version
to 'Uthmin. the third CJihph, who esublished the tcxtual tradition at
Medina as the normative one and who also fixed the sequence of the 114
chJipters, or surahs, more or Jess from tbe longest to the shortest Many
Western scholars tend to think that the QUT'an in its present form began
to be set down 11l about 650 but that the text WAS not definitively fixed
until the tenth century: normative Mushm doctrine teaches that it was all
written at onCe.
For Western readers first coming to the Qur'an, one of the most
surprising scctions has often been the slirah numhert:d 19 in the canoni-
cal collection, which bore the tLtle "Maryam: Mar}':'6 For as the nine-
teenth of I 14 surahs, this chapter was one of the longest 111 the Qur'an. It
 fHK()INEOFTIIEQU~'~~ 69

was, moreover, the only siirah lO bear a ....'oman's name, ahhough surah 4
had the superscripuon "An-Nisa: The Women" and surah 60 was called
"AI-Mumtahanah: The Woman Tried," BUl there was, for example, 110
surah named for Eve (who wa!>, for Islam as for Jud.usm and Christianity,
"the mother of all hvi ng" 7), nor one named for Hagar, motheroflshmael
by Abraham and therefore in a real sense the founding mother oflslam .
In the judgment of many scholars, surah 19 came from the Meccan
period of the prophet's revelations, during which "references to Mary
tend to emphasize the fact that she was the virgin mother of Jesus" ; siirah
3, by conrrast, has often been a.<;signed to the prophet's time in Medina,
whose references to Mary "tend to focus on the negation of Jesus's
divinity "8 Surah 19 contai ned quotations, paraphrases, and adaptations
from the Gospels of the New Testament, especially from the Gospel of
Luke, which was, as mentioned earlier, the most detailed portrait of the
Virgin Mary in the Christian Bible,9 The parallels were important in their
own rig ht, but they became especially so when seen in connection with
the differences between the Christian doctrine of Mary, as it had devel-
oped by the time o f Muhammad in the early seventh cenlUry, and me
Muslim portrait of her in the Qur'an and in Islamic commentaries on the
Holy Book 1 I) For a.<; Neal Robinson has pointed out, real parallels were
being drawn nOt only between Muhammad and Jesus as pan of the
sUCl.:ession of prophets but between Muhammad and Mary as both
bearer.; o f the word of God, 11 As the Qur'in says later, "And of Mary,
daughter of 'Imran, who guarded her chastity, so that We breathed into
her a life from Us, and she believed the words of her Lord and His Books,
and was among the obedient," 11 In relation to the o ther materials aoout
the history of Mary through the centuries and with me aid of commenta~
tors ooth Muslim and Western, then, what follows is a commentary on
the portion of surah 19 dealing specifically with Mary, 11
J 6,Commemorate Mary in the Book, These opelUng words followed upon a
paraphrase of the account in the first chapter o f the Gospel of Luke about
the birth o f John the Baptist, which seems to have been cast, as was the
New Testament story, so as to emphasize the parallels between the birth of
John the Bapti ~l and the birth of Jesus: annunciaLion, miraculous divine
imcnention, ~pcClal mj~~iOll for the about-to-be-born child. I. But it is
noteworthy tlla! both in the New Te~[ament and in the Qur'3n the annull
ciatlon of the mlTilculous birth of John was brought by the messenger of
God to his father, Zechariah, whereas in luke the annunciation by the
angel of the birth of Je!:.us was addressed to his mother, Mary. In the
Qur'alllc verSIon, morOO\'er, the name of Elizabeth, mother of John, did
n01 even appear, Therefore, although the word of God to John the Baptist
wa." "0 John, hold fast to the Book,"l~ this sCClion opened with the
formula "Commemorate Mary in the Book," dearly assigning her a verr
spedal place 1Il the hl.!,toric.ll plan of "Allah, most benevolent, most
meroful." It may have been'il. refleuion of postbiblical Christian Mar-
iological spirituality and thought tha.t the first narrative item in thiS
commemoration of Mary was.l report not contained in luke or .Illy of the
other Gospels: "Wilen she withdrew from her lamily to a place in the ~st
and took cover from them." More likely, it would appea.rlhat at this point
the commemoration of Mary brought echoes of the commemoration of
Hagar. mother of Ishmael. in chapter 16 and aga.in in chapter 21 of the
Book of Genesis, the twO aCCOWlt5 of her expulsion being ra.ther difficult
to harmonize; for Hagar did "t.lke cover from" her family, that is, from
Sarah a.nd Abraham. It was to Ishmael, son of Abraham, that Islam looked
as it, founder, favored by God, who had promised about Ishmael, also In
the Hebrew and Christian Scnptures and therefore both in the Jewish and
in the Christian tradition, "1 will make him a great na.tion."16
17. We salt 0 spirit of Ours to ha- II"ho (lpponcd WOrt her m t~e (onertle form (If 0
man, J 8. "I seek refuge in Ihe Merciful from you, if you fror Him." shr S(lid . He replIed: "I
am only a mtsstnytr from )'tlur Lord [st'lItl to bciwl\' a good son on you." And ea.rlier:
"The angels said: '0 Mary, Indeed God ha.s fa\oured you and ma.de you
immaculate, and chosen you from all the women of the world. So adore
your Lord, 0 Mary, and pay homage a.nd bow with those who bow in
prayer'" 17 This was the Qur'an's \'ersion of the a.nnunda.uon. In its basic
outline it matched the account in the Gospel of Luke, There wa~ an
angelic messenger, identified in the New Te~tament as Ga.briel but here
less speCifically as "the angels" or ,oa ~pirn of Our.;. " He Identified himself
as "only 1 messenger from your lord." The content of tile messenger's
 HIIlO: l0 Of TlH ()\a'~N 71

ilnnouncement to h~r was, in the Qur'in a.s in the Gospel, that she was to
have a son, But here an interesting contrast asserts itself. In the Gospel,
Gabriel said (0 Mary: .. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the
Highest: and the Lord God shall give unlO him the throne of his father
David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever: and of his
kingdom there sha.ll be no end. "18 Those words reflected, and formed a
biblical foundation for, the Christian teaching that as "the Son of the
Highest," Mary's Son occupied a unique position not only in human
history but in the divine life itself, thus in the Holy Trinity. Because the
single-minded concentration of the religion of the Qur'an on the tID -

equivocal oneness of God excluded all such language about God's haVing
a Son and therefore about there being a Trinuy, that enure speech of
Gabriel was encapsulated in the simple phrase "a good son," The angels
said to Mary: "0 Mary, God gives you news of a thing from Him. for
rejoicing, (news ofone) whose name will be Messiah, Jesus, son o f Mary,
illustrious in this world and the next, and one among lhe honoured, who
will speak to the people when in the cradle and when in the prime oflife,
and will be among the upright and doers of good . "19 Thal Willi to say, the
child to be born 'would be son of Mary, but not Son of God. The angelic
message in Luke went on, moreover, to a prophecy th at subsequem
Christian interpreters were to find highly problematic, namely, that "the
throne or his father David" would be Ius and that from that throne he
would reign eternally. This prophecy and others like it in both the Old
and the New Testaments figured prominemly in the Struggles during the
second and third ceill uries over the question of whether Ch rist on 11is
return would establish an eanhly realm for a lhousand years, struggles
that have been reenacted repeatedly III Christian history, both at the end
of the Middle Ages and in the twentieth cemury.10 All of that, too, was
absent from the Qur'inic retelling, in which thererore Mary was not the
Mother of the Ki ng and therefore would not be entitled, as she was in the
Catholic tradition, 10 such a name as Queen.
20. ~HO'>'I' can I have 0 SOD,· silt said, wh('JI no mOD has lOucha! mt, nor am I sinfulr
21. He soid; "Thus will it be. Your Lord SOld; 'It is easy for Me: and tMt; 'We sholl makt
him 0 sign for men and a blessing from Us: This is a lhing olre.Jdy d~reed." Again, it is
important to note in the fir~t J!htance the fidelity of the Qur'an to the
New Testament version of the account of Mar)' ';, word~: "How shall this
he, ,eeing I know not a man?" ll - whLch followed the standard language
of the Hebrew Bi hIe, going hack to the early chapter~
of Genesis, in ,Ising
the verb "to know" a~ a cuphemL~1ll for sexualintercouf!>e. ll Such fidel-
ity to the New Tcstame.lll means that for the Qur'an and for its loyal
adherenlS, no les.' than for the Gospel and its loyal adherems, Marl' was
correctly identified by the oxymoron Virgin Mother. That aspect of Mus-
hm Manolog)' went on to create both admiration and cOllStl~rnation in
the Christian responses to Islam, both in the Byzantine East and in the
Medieval We~t. Similarly, the statements "Your Lord said: 'It is easy for
Me,''' and "That i~ how God creates what He wills. When He decrees a
thing, He Sarlo 'Be,' and it is, "H represented the counterpart to the word
of Gabriel in Luke: "With God nothing shall he impos~ible. " H But again
the omissions were, if an}thing, even more interesting, and more rele-
vant to the consideratlon of the portrait of Mary. For in the Gospel,
Gabriel answered Mary's question by explaining, "The Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee. and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:
therefore also that hair thing which shall be born of thee shall be called
the Son of God.. " 2 ~ All of that explanation was conspicuou~lr eliminated
in the Qur'in. The one 10 he born, the angelic messenger said here,
would be "a good son"- a good son of Mary, that is-but would In no
traditional Christian sense "he called the Son of God." for that would
have implied the Trinity and, in Muslim eres, have negated biblical mono-
theism. Probahly for the same reason. the promise of Gabriel to Mary,
"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest
shall overshadow thee," had likewise disappeared; for there was no Trin-
ity, and hence no "Holy Ghost" m the orthodox trinitanan sense of Ihal
title.
22 . Whm dlt: cooceh'N him sht Wtflt away to a dislllntl'locr. 23. The birth pon9~ ltd
h~r to the trunk of a date-palm Irtc. "Would that I had died before this. ~ she said, "and
btcOIllf a thing fO'90lIffl, unrtmtmben:d : 24 Thm lo VOice] colin! 10 her from below:
~Gnt:H not; your Lon! has moo(a ril1Liet Bush forth riahl below you. Shak~ the trunk of the
date-palm tm, and il will drop riptdatt5 for you. 26. Eal and drink. and ~ot peace. If you
 Set any man, ItJ! him: 'I haw mily mwtd a fast to AI-Rahman and (IInnot sptak to ony Ollt
this day:· All of this was enti rely new in relation to the New Testam
ent.
Even mor e explicit in thes e verses than.at the beg inni ng of this peri
cop e,
mor eov er, was the afor eme ntio ned typo logy betw een Mary, mot
her of
Jesus, and H.agar, mot her ofls hm. ael. Tn two sep ante cha pter s of Gen
esis,
whi ch m.ay h.ave repr esen ted dist inct origin.al trad itio ns but whi ch
have
both been inco rpo rate d into the boo k as we have it, Hagar wen t
"to a
dist ant plac e," the first tim e whe n her preg nan cy arou sed the jeal ousy
of
Sarah and lhe seco nd time afte r the bin h of Isaac. 26 Her desp aIri
ng cry
was answ ered by a mir acu lous inte rven tion of God, Because the Qur
'an
was, by defi niti on, a ne"" reve1ation that cam e all at onc e in a blin
ding
series of mom ents of divi ne authority, V,'e can only spec ulat e abo
ut the
earlier stages of rh is typo logy bet\\--een Hag ar and Mary. But it doe
s not
seem to stre tch hiSIQrical and literary prob abil ity to draw an ana logy
with
the typology betw een Eve and Mary disc usse d earh er.v For Hagar,
tOO,
was a foun ding mot her, as Eve was: and Ishm ael was the epo nym
ous
beg inni ng of the peo ple kno wn as Ishmaelites. Thi s enti re con
stru ct,
ther efor e, may be seen to have bee n an Islamic way of cele brat ing
the
special plac e of the Virgin Mary in the hist ory of the dea ling s of "All
ah,
mOSt ben evo lent , ever-me rcif ul." with the wor ld. As the " goo d son
" of
Mary, his mot her, Jesus stoo d in the succession of the called serv
ants of
Go d-a fter Abr aha m, fath er of Ishm ael, and after Moses; and
befo re
Muhamm.ad . The refo re the ope ning wor ds of this section of the
nine -
teen th siin h, "Co mm emo rate Mary in the Boo k," wer e followed in
later
sect ions by "Co mm emo rate Abr aha m in the Book" and then by "Co
m-
mem orat e Moses in the Boo k." "the Book" bein g tbe stan dard term
in
the Qur 'an for the Heb rew Scri ptur es. 28
The relation of Mary to that succ essi on took a surp risll lg turn in the
foUmving verses : 27. Ibm sh~ brought tM child to her peoplt. Thty exclaimed
: ·0
Mary, you hal'e dont a mast astonishing thing! 28. 0 sister of Aaron, your Catha wos
not a
"ick\'d pason, !Wr your mal her smfuW As It stoo d, the text iden tifie d Mar
y
("M arya m" in the sup ersc ript ion to this siira h) with the "sis ter of Aar
oll"
and sist er of Moses, called "Mi riam " in the Boo l; of Exodus; in a sim
ilar
way, the thlr lcen th-c enru ry Jew ish polemiC against Christianity, Niaa
hon
Vttus, b)' meall~ orthe de~ignation Mlnorn m'gadddo Dosrnuo. canfl,ued her
with Mary Magdalene. perhap~ with the iment of showing that. far from
being tile Holy Virgin Mother o f God celehratel'! in Chri~llan devotion
and doclrine, Mar} the mother ofJesu~ was a proMitutc and a sinner. 1?
Ikglnning alread)' with Byzantine writt'K, Wc!>tern Crillo, of[;.lam and of
the Qur'an. who dismissed the prophet as an unlettered camel driver
with de[w,ion~ of grandeur. seized on this passage to prove JUSt how
cDnfused he was, mixing up two women who lived well over a millen-
niulll apaTl ~Imply because they hold the _~ame name. It became the
!>landard explanation of tl1l5 verse to SoIy that MuhalI\ll\ad had hea rd Jews
speak about Miriam and chii~[ians speak about Mary-both of them.
presumably. idetuified as "Maryam"-and in his ignoranct· had made
the two women into one, As the editor and translator orthe most widely
Circulated tran'\latlon of the Qur'an into English has explained, hO\\e\cr,
"Muslim commemators deny thc charge thaI there is confusion here
between Mirtalll, Aaron'~ sister, and Maryalll (Mary). mother of Jesus.
'Sister of Aaron: they argue, ~i[Jlply means 'virtuous woman' in this
context," 30 But the typological use ofHag.lr in the retelling of the story of
Moses in the Qur'an could be taken to suggest that even without follow -
ing the high doctrinc of biblical inspiration of the Qur'an taught by
Muslim orthodoxy, it would he possible to see in this idelllificil.tion
something other than it simple mistake. For there war" already in post-
biblical Judaism, Widespread speculation and expcclJ.tion not only o f the
return of EliJah, for whom a place wa~ therefore set ~t the Seder table, but
of the subsequent historical rolc of Moses. Christianity had picked up on
this speculation. both by cOlltra!>ting Moses and Christ in such passages a~
the formula. ··The law was gi\'en by :\otoses, but grace and truth came b)'
Jesm Chri~t. "31 and by coordInating Moses and Christ (and Elijah) 011 the
Mount ofTrallsfiguration. where the two Old Testament figures appeared
Oil either side of Jesus as hc was tr,lIlsfigured. J 7 Because it was the b~sic
insistence-and, al> seen by J~Jarl1, the baSIC corrective-of the Qur'an to
restore Je~u~ to the prophetiC succe-ssioll. hefore Muha.mmad and a.fter
Moses, the parallelism between Moses and Jesus was a central emphasis,
[t wO\lld tllerefore appear to be at least a plausible aiLcrnative to the
 H ERO B IE or T HE Q IJ II. A" 75

stan dard Western dim inut ion of Mu ham mad [0 see this phra se "sis
ter of
Aar on," addressed to Mary mot her of Jesus, as ano ther doc ume ntat ion
of
mat parallelism.
34. This ....'05 JtsUS, son of Mary: A true account (hey wmend about 35. II dotS nat
bellol'e GOO ta hare a SOIl. Too immaculate is He! Whm He dr.cretsa tbing HI' bas only to 5(ly:
-Be," and it is. 36. Dtsus only said] ·Surely God is my Lord and your Lord, so
1V0rship
Him. Tbis is ,he stn:light poth .· 37. Yet the Stl"tarians difftud amo"ll thcmsdl·e;. Thi
s
sum mat ion was clearly polemical. It explicitly asserted a disj unc
tion
whe re onh odo x Christianity had taug ht a con junc tion : "Th is was Jesu
s,
son ofM ary "- "It does not behove God to have a son. Too imm acu late
is
He! " By the tim e of the com ing of the pro phe t Mu ham mad , mor e
than
five hun dred years of pos t-N ew Testament theo logy had passed, dur
ing
whi ch, in lhe words of the Qur 'an, "the sectariansdlfTered amo ng th
em-
selv es" -an d mightily. Five ecu men ical cou ncil s had met and pass
ed
dog mat ic decrees : Nicaea in 32S , Con stan uno ple I in 381 , Ephesus
in
431 , Chalcedon in 451 , Con stan tino ple II in S53. Thus ther e was by
this
tim e a massive bod y of materia l in the orth odo x Christian "de pos it of
the
faith [depositum fidei]." And because the rela tion betw een the divi ne natu
re
and the hum an natu re in the one pers on of Jesus Chrisl wu the bur den
of
so many of those dog mat ic decrees, Mary had figured pro min entl
y in
them , u the title The otok os. the Mo ther of God, doc ume nted :
Jesus
Christ was Son of God and son of Mary, and the pro blem was how
to
exp ress that dist inct ion with out crea ting a division. The refo re the
Mus -
lim reaction against the cou rse that orth odo x dogmatiCS had taken in
the
Christian chu rch, specifically with regard to the pers on of Jesus Chr
ist,
also had to follow the Christian dev elop men t by focusing seri ous atte
n~
tion on Mary, not as The otok os, Mo ther of God, here , but as Mot her
of
Jesus. In these verses of sura h 19, ther efor e, the cou nter poin t was
be-
tween the two ope ning affirmations: "This was Jesu~, son ofMary"~"
Tt
doe s not behove God to have a son ." And as for Christian orth odo xy,
so ill
a d1rectly anti thet ical way also for Muslim orthodoxy, the key to
the
corr ect und erst and ing both of who Jesus was and of wha t he did
was
Mary, his mot her.
The por trait of Mary the Virgin Mo ther of Jesus III the Qur 'an not
onl}' occupIed an important place in the Qur'in iL~e1C and therefore in
the faIth oflslal11, hut it carned "bridge-1m! Id ing" implication\ In several
directiom. One of these wa~ certain I}' the implications of MaT) for the
relat ion between Judaism and Islam. [t may be difficult for some to
believe, but the ponralt of Judaism in the Qur'in represented at hean a
profound affirmation. "The People of the Book" was the honorific title
with which it referred to the people of Israel throughout, and even some
of the less than flattering langua.ge in surah 17, Bani [STiri/, "The Children
of Israel," was chiefl}' a repemion of what the Lord God had said about
the people of Israel over and ~\'er in the Ilcbrew Bible. A case can be made
for the the~is that the Que 'an wa.s a large-scale effort to redrc~s the balance
after six centuries of Christian ami-Judaism, That became evident in a
special way through the reclaiming o f Ahraham as the common ancestor
and father in faith, as he was celebrated in sura!' 14: "All praise be to God
who bestowed on me Ishmael and Isaac in old age," Abraham prayed
there,ll linking the twO SOliS of Abraham, and therefore the two peoples
descended from those two sons, in coordination with each other. rather
(han ill a subordmation oflshmael to Isaac. In the light of the subsequent
importance of Egypt in L~lal1lic culture and politics, it is amusing to notC'
that the history of the patriarch Joseph, as elaborated in later rabbinical
traditions, was retold in su ra h ! 2 from Israel's side, not from Egypt's side
And Mose~ emerged in the Qur'in as the giver of the law and the prede-
cessor of the prophet. But among these connections bct\veen Judaism
and Islam, Mary occupied a special place. Because the Qur'in could be
read as the re~!Oration of jesu~ to the history of I~racl, Mary had to be the
decisive hinge in its campaign, for she was, also for Christians, the point
of connection between Je<;us and the hIstory of Israel. And evert in the
negative language of the Qur'an about judai.<;m she had to PUt in her
.. ppearance: "Cursed were disbelievers among the children of Israel by
David .. nd jesus, 50n of Mary, because the} rebelled and transgressed the
bounds," God said through the prophet. H
Parallel to those implications of Mary for the relation between Juda-
ism md I<;lam were the llnplicatiollS of Mary for the relation between
Islam md Christianity. The portrait of the Virgin Mary in the Qur'an was
 HH OHH O 'lIU Ql!~'AN 77

onc of its most surprisi ng features even to the earliest authors of Christi all
responses to Islam, Dne write r of anti-Muslim lrcatises, Bartholomew of
Edessa, probably in the ninth cennlry, declared: " In the emire Qur'an
there do not occur any praises of Muhammad or or his m other Aminah,
such as are found abou t our Lord Jesus Christ and about the Holy Virgin
Mary, the Theotokos,"l5 For, as Norman Daniel has said, "There is noth-
ing else in all the Qur 'an to parallel the warmth with which Christ and
His mother are spoken o f. Christ is presented as a unique being, but His
mother's personality appears more vividly, The Qur'an inspires a devo-
tion to Mary of w hich Muslims might have made more."l6 Dne can only
add that Christians, too, might have made more ofit than they did. The
two principal objections of Islam to the Christian attitude toward Mary
were to the concept and title Theotokos and to her ponrayal in icons,
Because of its dedication to the transcendence and otherness of God,
Isl<lIll found the title Theotolc:os ofTensive- "It does not behove God to
have a son, Too immaculate is he!"37- an d at least some Muslim apolo-
gists claimed that Christians were including Mary the Mother of God in
the Godhead, In spile of disclaimers of this in Ch ristian responses, espe-
cially Byzantine responses, the Muslim critique may well have reflected
kinds of confusion about Mary at [he level of folk religion that were
making her into a goddess, a confusion not without parallels in ChriSlian
Ilislory. as other chapters o f this book suggest. The special Slanding o f her
image among By:.:antine and Slavic iconslB singled her out for special
attention also from the Muslim spokesmen who attacked the worship of
icons as idolatry, Nevertheless, as the Christian responses sought to make
clear, Christian faith did not place her alongside the Deity bUl exalted her
as the supreme exemplar of what human na.ture could become- and
what it had become in her by the very sovereign will and decree ofGod of
which the angelic messenger spoke when he said to Mary in the Qur'an:
"Your Lord said : 'We shall make him a sign for men and a blessing from
Us.' Th is is a thing already decreed: "39 For Islam this meant, as an earlier
siirah had insisted, that "the Christ, son of Mary, was but an apostle, ,Uld
m any apostles had [come and] gone before him; and his mother \va~ 0 womall
of truth, " 4 0
l~ II." ',f , "" ~ " ,

1~11t even h\'}'~!Ild all of these lI11pl1(;aoOn5 w('re the IIllpll(atlOm of t he

piLlure of "'1M)' ill the Qur 'an for multicultural Chri\!I.lII undcrstandLl1g
With hlalll and beyond The urgent need to find srmool~ and conu:pts in
our ~C\'l'raJ cultural traditions toat can perform the funUlOn of.J. ponufcx,
the !ullt-liOn 01 priestly mc(liation and bridge·buildillg. ~uggest~ that
tl1t.:re has probabl} heen no s) mhoJ or concept III Christendom that has
carTied out tlll~ "pontifical" vocation of medl.llion wit 11 more succe~s a.nd
more amplitude Ihan Mary_~ I And a prllT1ar)' proof for t11allhesis was Ihe
plume of MUy Hl the Qur'in, in \\Iuch. accordlllg to the IIl1crprCtauon
quott'd from Daniel, her "personality ap pear~ more vividl)-" even thall
that of her son or or the prophet, But with apologies 10 Muslim itOno-
cla\m,this IheMs would have to he extended chiefly through attentIon to
the ,\alred PJcturc~ o f Mar)' in a varict)' of cultures.~l it \vould appl)' as
wdlto the feasts aud festivals devoted II) her and 10 the ~hTl[les that ha,'e
sprung up in her honor ,11 such places a.<, Lourde~, Fatima. M~rpingen,

and Guadalupe. ~ 3 And hl!rc an important contrl bution II) what 11 1ight be
calkd the "multitultural Mary" came from a source discu<.~ed earlier, the
\\'ord~ of the Bride from the Song ofSong~: "Black am I and beautiful, " H
together with the portraits of the Virgin Mary that h.we heen grouped as
"Black Madonnas "H A~ part of the same (;ommcllIar) in which he
corre(led Ihe u~ual tran:,lauon orlhose won/:.. Man-in Pope, Citing the
most Ilnponant art-histoTical monograph 011 the subJectY> pre~cllled
several h),pOlheses to explain Ihe Black Madonna~, concluding that an
origin in Asia Millar seemed "highl) probable" and draWing Significant
parallels with the Black Demeter. Isb, and other black deities of paga-
lliSI1l.~1 rhe early historl' of the veneratioJl of the Virgin Marrin Africa
anticipated the~t' later dl'\c!opmel1ls."8
The titk "BIKk Madolllla" acqUired specl~ l significance when it
came to be applied to the celebrated iton of Mary at Jasna Gora in the
Pohsh til)' of Clfslochowa, attributed to Sa1ll1 Luke Ihe icol1 paimer,
which is the mo_,1 fevered ~acred image in Celli roll Europc and til(" object
of wllntles.~ pilgrimages (sec p_ viii. above). H Prince Ladislalls Opolvyk
broughlll 10C/fslochowa in 1382. and Prince Jaglcllo built the church
for tht' ~hrinc of Ihe ic011 afler his marriage to Queen Jadwiga of Poland
 >lUOJNt OF THE QUR"AJ< 79

and hiscoron.:nion in \386. Outof a lifetime spent 10 the Polish culture of

which she was the primary symbol, Henryk Gorecki in 1976 composed
his Opus 36, SymfonlCl pleSni ictlosnych [Symphony of songs of complaint],
which stands with Benjamin Britten's War Requiem and the Lmingrud Sym-
phony ofDmitry Shostakovich as a memorial to the victims of the Second
World War. But it also stands as the expression, especially in its soprano
arias, of what Ule Polish lradition has seen in the face of the Black
Madonna ofCz~s tochowa.so The blackened face of the Virgin in that icon
was the result of smoke, but it ha.~ nevertheless had the salutary effect of
stimulating and sanctioning the process of what Pope John Paul II, a
special devotee of the Virgin of Cz~s tochowa. has called "accuhuration,"
particularly liturgical and artistic acculturation. Yet by an irony that is not
without many historical parallels, the most forceful Statement ever made
of the case for these multicultu ral images came from a source that de-
nounced all images, the Holy Qur'an of Islam.
Juh.lnn~, \'Nmttr_ Afkso.,. of hlllb, (.
167 1-7 4 The M~trupollWl Mu,eum of Aft, :-':e--.'
York, Th~ Fri~""'m C"UcUlon, Beqlt~t of ).ildt~'" Frims.om, J 93 I
6 The Handmaid of the Lord
and the Woman of Valor

And Mary SClid,

&hold Iht handmaid I)f the lord.
-luke 1:38

A woman of valor who will find?

-Proverbs 3 J: JO

f historians of art or of the church were to follow the example of

their colleagues in the nalUr.11 sciences by compiling a "citation index,"
not of the anides, papers, and books of other scholars as scientists do, but
of the themes that have Glptu red the attention of painters and sculptors
throughout history. and espeCially if they were to prepil.fe such an index
together. it seems clear that among all the scenes in the life o f me Virgin
Mary that ha.ve engaged the piety of the devout and the creativity of the
artists, the annunciation has been predominant. The annunciation has
been so prevalent. in fact, that the number of references to II in such an
Index would pro bably exceed the number of references to all other
Marian themes combined . Each theme and chapter in this book could in
onc way or another have been illustrated by an artistic rendering of the
annunciation . I
Depending on how one interprets them, at least three works of early
Christian art in the Roman catacombs appear to have portrayed the an-
nunciation: one from the Catacomba di Sal1la Priscilla, another from the
Catacomha di Santi Marcellino e Pietro. and a third fro m the Catacomb.l

"
81 1.' ~!)"~If>(H ~IH LOA!)

di Via l.ltina. di<;{;oyercd onl} in 1956. ' The annunciation became a

theme for altarp]('ces and other painlll1g~ in the We\lern Middle Ages.
becoming e~pedally frequent in the later MIddle Ages. a\ David Robh ha~
shown. l In the B}~£.lnline £aM. the annunciation constituted o ne of the
twel\'(' fcasts of the church year Eventually the annunciauon became the
subject of many icom 1Il t he East. including two B)~lantine Cilmeos that
have been dated by some an historians to as early as the sixth century:
these ar(" preserved in the collections of the Hermitage Mu~eum in Saint
Pete~burg, i More gra ndly. the annundation often appeared on the "royal
ponal" of the i<.:onosta.~is In a Byzantine church. At the "great entrance"
of the priest through the icorio~tasis in the course of the BY/Online LitUl!lr of
Saint Basil. hc recited the scvenl "comings·' of God and Chris! in the
course of the hislOl)' of sah-ation. including above all the coming that
lOok place through the incarnation 01.1 the event of the annunciation to
Mary.~ So abo the annundation painted on that portal represented the
supreme cOllling of God the Logos in the flc'ih that he received from the
Virgin Mary.
As the~e artistic representations suggest. the primary importilnce of
the annunciation was believed 10 lie in the illlra.de of the incarnation. 6 In
the drama.turgic structure of the first chapter of the Gospel of Lu ke. the
annunciatloll constituted the narrative counterpart to the climax of the
first chapter of the Gospel of John: "And the Word was made flesh."7 It
was the central meaning o f the annunciation. and of Christian faith and
teaching a.bout the doctrine of the incarnation, that. as these words of
John's Go~pcl confes~cd (whkh were recited as part of the Angelus).
"Vtrbum coro (ouum cst, The Word was made flesh, "8 ,lOd that this had
happened when. III the words of the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, "God
sent fonh his Son. made of a woman. "'} Throughout history Ihc attention
to the perwn (If Jesus Chrht was. as in the words Just qtloted. closely
linked with attention to 111~ Mother. What the Gaspe! of John stated in the
language of theology and of Hellenistic phIlosoph)' when it sa.id "The
Word [Logosl wa.<; made flesh,"' the Gospel of Luh· described in the
language of drama and dIalogue. in the form of an c!(change between
Mar}' as the chosen one of God and the angel Gabriel a.s the emissary of
 HA'< Dl>IJ "D Of H H lDkD 81

God. This ann unc iatio n, as well as the earlier one to Zechariah, fath
er of
Joh n the Baptist, followed a set outl ine and stylized form. 1 0
At the sam e time , the ann unc iation repr esen ted for Christian thou ght
the sup rem e exa mpl e and para digm for pon deri ng the mys teri ous que
s-
tion that had occ upie d so muc h atte ntio n in both the hist ory of phil
oso-
phy and the hist ory of theo logy and that had eng age d the maj or atte
ntio n
of thin kers not onl y in the Christian lrad itio n but in the Jewish
and
Mus lim trad ition s as well: the relation betw een neceSSity and free will
or
betw een divi ne sove reig nty and hum an free dom . Thi s was one of
the
mos t difficult of all Christian controversies to explain to Jewish thin
kers,
who saw no nee d of cho osin g betw een the free dom of God and
the
free dom of the hum an will. Thr oug hou t hist ory Mary was seen as,
on
one hand, the "ha ndm aid of the Lord," as she called hers elfi n Luke,
I I the
one who bec ame the inst rum ent of the divi ne plan . In every cen tury
she
served as the mod el of patience, inde ed of quie tisti c passivity and
un-
que stio ning obe dien ce. Wh en lhe pro phe t Isaiah asked, "Shall the
day
say 10 him llul fash ione d it, Wh at makest Ihou ?" and igai n affirmed,
"We
are the day, and thou our pott er"; or whe n the apostle Paul, ech oing
these
wor ds of the Heb rew Bible, asked, "Ha th nOI the pott er pow er ove
r the
day, of the sam e lum p to make one vessel unto hon or, and ano ther
unto
dish ono r?" t2- tha t was an affirmation of the IIDk-Dowable and unq
ues -
tionable auth orit y of God , in relation to whi ch the hum an race and
the
individua.l pers on had to be viev.'Cd as submissive, even as iner t mat
ter.
The wor d of the a.ngel of me ann unc iatio n, "W ith God shall noth ing
be
imp ossible, " bec ame the basis for seei ng Mary, by her own self~des
igna ~
tion of Han dma id (Ancilla in the Vulgate). as pro of that whe n the sove
r-
eign auth orit y and alm ight y will of God. prevailed, as they always had
and
always wou ld eventually, the outc ome was one that hid to be be ack now
l-
edg ed as goo d and wis e altogether, even thou gh It had bee n veil
ed in
obs curi ty for the eyes ofm orta .ls at the time. It add ed to this defi niti
on of
Mary the Han dma id that she was a. wom an and was ther efor e sup pos
edly
cast, by a deadly com bina tion of natu re and crea tion and fall, in lhe
role
of the passive and submissive one , the vessel th at received. The refo re
she
cou ld be held up to wom en as a mod el of how they oug ht lO behave,
in
submlssi\'e obedIence to God. to their husbands. and to the clergy and
hIerarchy of the church
But thrmlghollt most of the histOry of reflection on the events of the
ann unciation and o n the participation of the person of Mary in those
events. this portrait wa~ only half the picture. For it has often been noted
tha t an obedience that is open to the future should be defined as supreme
activity. not pas!>I\'lI}' On closer inspection . the refore. the mle Handmaid
of the Lord was sigmficanLly marc complex than many of its interpreters
had supposed. The Greek term wasdoule kyriou.literally. woman sJa\'e of the
Lord. It was the feminine form of the much mOTe familiar and marc fre-
quent phrase in the masculine. doulos /esou CnriSlCtu, stave of Jesus Christ. 13
which became. in the New Testament, almost a technical te rm for the
apostles. It went on to be<:ome the more elaborate and more complete
mle ·'slave of the sta ves of God [SC'ryus se"'Orum Dti]": Augustine. for exam-
ple, had styled himself "slave of Christ and slave of the slav(!s of Christ
[sefVUS Christi SC'rvorurnqu~ Christi]," but beginning with Pope Gregory the
Great servus sen-orum Dtt was added to the panoply of the standard tides of
the bishop of Rome. I i It would be difficult, on the basis of studying the
pontificate of Gregory J. to conclude that the term seOllS proVIded a Justi fi~
cation for passivity or qUietism. At its foundation, the term was a refer-
ence to the paradox ofOuist as being both in "the form of God [morphe
thfOU)" and in the "form o f a slave [morphf" doulou]. "IS The ma~culine title
doulos and the feminine tide doulc appeared together in the New Testament
only once, in a quotation from the Greek of the SeptuagInt In the second
chapter of Ihe Book of Acts: "And on my servants and on my hand-
maidens [cpi lOllS d<lulous mou kai cpi loS ooulss mou] I will pour out in Ihose
days my Spi!i!. " And then the quotation added the portentous promise:
"and they shall prophe~y. " 16 In the case of the male slaves, the doulol. the
fulfillment of that promise was the history of the apostolic church as
described in the follOWing (wenty-six chapters o f the Book of the Acts of
the Apostles and IL~ conllnuation through the ages. But for Ihe fulfillment
of the promise of the prophet Joel in the case of the female slaves, the first
and Ihe preeminent place to look, as her association with the apostles in
the first chapter o f the Book of Acts suggeMed. 17 was the one who had
 ,
, ,.

tbuIt of lilt C"!lieuium of (hI Annulld~tiOfl, frr.«:o, founh tentu ,y. Ca l ~corn b of Prisdlb., Rome
(ScaLI/ An R~urc~. N,y')

Annuooa(j"" OIl<! V"it~ljOd. Copl1t Chrisd.n le~li1e> ~iXlh (~Jllur)·. ViclOri~ &: Al~n .Mu,""um,
loudon . (Vi([oria &; Albe.( Mus~um/A ' 1 Rt$()un:~. N.y.)
Annu.da';"" and V,,,w''''rl" " "<"l,y <,,,.,ilp",,,, IlOflk fm-~," I.,," tiglHh rt'''",C) ~, ,,,i,,", FI<,)".".
<I"A" '"' <I"Hi'In'''"" 11,,,,,,"1,
 •

•
•
,,.'.
12 ,
•

Ann'!II".lion f rOIl! .n A'menio" t ll~nul<:ripl of the Gospt'I,. c. I 280. Yernan. Arm~nj.

(0 Edimuli.j
Simon.. ~ I.,,,,,,. Tbr AnJu.nuo'KIn. rl~1d ,I. 133 3 G~lkr I~ rlrgh Uffill. Flormc,,- (EI IC
u''''~lIlg / An Roource. '" Y)
Aru:JWlCioli(lf1 01 tn. n,WlI"n. Ill",srry. early founeclllll C<:!llllrr- Jko,,~nmus~um. Mll~n der
Sw il R~", k lln~halJ.en. ( 0 Giaucion)
',,,dr~a ddl. Rooo .. , Nm """" ',,,,,, gl.ilcd ,~ rrKOlla, ,ix,e~nth c~n lLLr r 1.4 \hn~. Sam".rio.
(S<.al. 1 An R~,(}urc~, N.Y.)

1i>::in~ ""9'" Fr. A"gdlm, Tb. ArulUflrlOlioo, 111t"n;,med in it;.1 from :vI i's.l , L 14-30. MS 55 8,
f.J h.. \\ men di San \.i.uco, Flor<;ncc, (N ;colo Orsi Bo l1ag Ii,,; I Art Rc«>u,cc, N, y,)
 -,

uri" di Giov£nn l BT~CCCcS<:O , i\nnurIC'.'I(>n, la,e fifl<:<;:l11h centur)'. Mu_",,, dlJ Lou,",,,_ (Eridl
Les.o;'lIgl An RCWlltCc, N.Y.)

PIlI'lou! 1"'9'- C.. r1o Cr.v~lI l. Til( Annuncia,ion, with Sci", E"'"hu~ 1-Hili , Nalion.1 GalJ"ry.
LondO'I.
1:1 Gre<.o. Th<Armurl(j~IIOfI, MllSeU<I1of Fill~ Arts (Sz"rm""~welll'..luz"Uln), Il"d,f'<-"". (hid,
'-'",Ing 1 . \,1 R,,,,,.u r,~. NY)

p,,\ I()U, 1"'11' M:m)"JI (""i'""." ~Id. /\IlnUIlCJ~ U~n, ,kid] I, hen)wi", A I'l rp iece. L I 5 I 0- IS.
~ h"'''' U IitCrlilld,'n. CUlU1M (Gi' ,wdon I Arl I\e"'ur~,'. ~. Y)
Pierre· AugUSte Ptch(.>n. Thf NululI<iolwn, 1l!5 9, B.lsiliquc NOIre D~me. Cby·~illl·Al1dr~ _
(Giu lldvn /Art It"""o«:e. N.Y,)
OrnlO Genlolc ... lu, AIInWIClollOll, l ! 62 3 G~!!nI~ S.b.>.lId~, Turin_ (Scala! Art RC'ol>"r<~.
NY)

Ann"nn.uOll from ~n Ettllopl~n .... ood c.."w OOX ""h pand palOlHlg$, eigtu,,",mh Of

nilleleemh C,,"tllr)- \tu~\ RO).u~ d'Arl e< d"HI"Ulre" Bru.."..!\.

D~nl~ G.. brid RO~S(:lIi, f,w AIl"II~ D«nini! (Tilt AIlnulK ialJon). I 849 - 50, Tale G~jJ~ry. I.ondml.
(T.tc Gall~ry. umdonl Art ResolllCC, N. y,)

Henry Oo;s.lW~ Turn e r. An.aWl(i~IIOll, 1898 Phil.delph,l MIIStU1l1 or Art. Tht' W P. Wibtlch
Colle<;tion.
S.h~do, D.!.h, Ttv """'<111(1011011, 1947 P'i\ ~If cnliC(l ion (EdJln",h~ C ,,,,,",. I 996)
 IOA" DMA ID O~ l1t~ lO~ D 85

iden tifie d hers elf in the story of the ann unc iatio n as douli': kyrioo: and
the
con tent of her first prop hesy ing was to be foun d in her resp ons
es to
Gabriel, and then in the revo lutio nary cadences of the Magnificat
That
cert ainl y did not sou nd very "passive" or quietistiC.
For, as the dual tide of this cha pter suggests, she was thro ugh out the
cen turi es the Han dma id of the Lord and the Woman of Valor, and neit
her
of these wit hom the other. Thu s in a tim e far late r than me sub ject mat
ter
of th e pres ent chaptcr, the peri od of slavery in the United States, "ma
ste rs
taug ht their slav es Christianity in o rder to inculcate obe dien ce, but spir
i-
tuals like 'Oh , Mary,' 'Go Dow n, Moses,' and othe rs indi cate that som
e
slaves iden tified with thos e Biblical hero es who had cha llen ged slavery
in
anc ient times."18 The Greek wor d for ann unc iatio n was ruangdism
os.
whi ch indicated the func tion of the ann unc iatio n story as the prim
e
exem plar of "eva ngeliza tion ," as this was dep icte d in the icons of
the
event and as it was exp oun ded in the com men tari es of the Greek Chr
is-
tian tradition on the narrative. That func tion bec ame evident in
the
form ulat ions of me fou rth- cen tury phil oso phic al theo logi an Gre gory
of
Nyssa, as he com men ted on the word~ of the ann unc iatio n from
the
Gospel of Luke:

At once, with the com ing upo n her of the Holy Spirit and
wit h her being ove rsha dow ed by the pow er of the Most High,
the hum an natu re in Mary (wb ere Wis dom buil t her hou se)
lProv. 9: 1], thou gh naturally pan of our sens uou s com pou nd
[of flesh and spir it], bec ame [bat which that ove rsha dow ing
pow er in essence was; for "wi thou t con trad ictio n the less is
blessed of the bett er" [Heb. 7:7 ] . Seeing, then , that the pow er
of the God hea d is an imm ens e and imm easu rabl e thin g, whi le
man is a weak atom , at the mom ent whe n the Holy Splf it
cam e upo n the Virgin and the pow er of the Most Hig h over-
sha dow ed her, the tabernacle form ed by suc h an imp ulse was
not dot hed with any thin g of hum an corr upti on: but, Just as it
was first con stitu ted. so it remallled, even thou gh it was man ,
spir it nevertheless, and grace, and pow er And the special attri-
86 HA'1D"AJD O. THE LORD

bUIes of our humanity derived luster from this abundance of

divine power.' 9

For in spite of the extraordinary, indeed unique, character of the event of

the incarnation of the Logos in the man Jesus Christ, these thinkers took 11
also as a model of how the" gospel [wongdion]" fun ctioned everywhere
and at all times, and therefore it was as well for them the defining
example of the full meaning of human freedom. It was, they maintained,
a narrow and crahbed conception of freedom to equate it with anarchy
and permissiveness and thus 10 define it as having the right to do what-
ever one pleased, no matter how destructive 10 self or to others; for in its
fullest and deepest sense it included supremely, as the twentieth-century
French man of letters Paul Ciaudd said and described it, the "liberty to
obey. "20 For if the human creature, having been cndo\vecl by the CreatOr
with free will as well as with the inalienable right to employ that free-
dom, was to employ freedom to attain authentic selfhood and authentic
humanity, such a liberty to obey implied, as Hans Ur.; von Balthasar said,
that "no finite freedom can be freer from restrictions than when giving
its consent to infinite freedom."!1 And the supreme illustration for von
Balthasar, as for such Greek theologians as Milximus Confessor whom
von Balthasar had interpreted so brilliantly, was the consent of the "finite
freedom" of the Virgin Mary to the "infinite freedom" of God in the
annunciation.
In the annunciation to Mary, the word of God was communicated
through a created messenger (and "angel" originally meant "messen-
ger" in Greek, as the equivalent term had in Hebrew), the angel Gabriel.
But unlike the "angel of the Lord " who in one night had slain \85,000
Assyrian soldiers from the armies of Sennacherib, 22 Gabriel brought the
word of God to Mary in order to evoke a response from her that was free
and unconstrained. In Greek Christian thought, Mary was predestined to
be the Mother of Christ; she was the chosen one of the Almighty. And the
will of the Almighty was law, for, once again in a formula of Gregory of
Nyssa, "the power of the divine will is a sufficient cause fur the thing~ that
are and for theu coming into existence out of nothing. "23 Yet these Greek
 HAt< DMA ID Of T H! L O ~D 87

Chr istia n thin kers insisted at the sam e tim e that it was only whe n
Mary
said, and of her own free will, "Be hold , the han dma id of the Lord
: be it
don e to me acco rdin g to thy wor d, "24 that the will of the Almight
y was
carr ied out. And, they argu ed, if that was true of the mos t Shat
teri ng
inte rven tion into hum an life and hist ory ever laun che d by God, it
had (Q
be true o f how the grace of God alw ays ope ra ted, resp ecti ng hum
an
free dom and inte grit y and ther efor e, as in the defi ning case of Ada
m and
Eve, risk ing diso bed ience,
As Iren aeus had put it, in the con tras t betw een Eve and Mary dis-
cuss ed earlier,2s "jus t as the form er was led astray by the word
of an
angel. so Ihal she Bed from God w hen she had transgressed His wor
d; so
did the latte r, by an ang elic com mun icat ion, receive the glad tidi ngs
that
she sho uld be the bea rer of [portarflJ God, bein g obe dien t [Q His
wor d,
And jf the form er did diso bey God , yet the latte r was pers uad ed [suas
a lSI]
to be obe dien t to God , in ord er that the Virgin Mar y mig ht bec ome
the
patr one ss [advocataJ of the virgin Eve ,"16 She was "pe rsua ded ," not
co-
erce d, to yield an obe dien ce that was no less volu ntar y in its affir mat
ion
than the diso bed ienc e or Eve had bee n in its negAtion. As free will
cou ld
not be taken away from Eve in ord er to say that she was not acco unta
ble
for her acti ons, so it cou ld not be taken away from Mary either,
in a
mis guid ed atte mpt to mak e the grace of God seem grea ter by min imi
zing
o r den ying hum an free will. It was a diff eren tiati ng cha ract eris
tic o f
Byzantine phil oso phy and theology, and one that ofte n prov oke d puz
zle-
men t or exa sper atio n in the West, that in its view s of the rela tion of
grac e
and free will iI did not wor k with the alte rnat ives dev elop ed in the tim
e of
Augustine, Wh en Pelagius, Aug usti ne's arch -op pon ent in lhe COlllrov
ersy
on grace, free will, and pred esti nati on, wa ~ sum mon ed in 415
to a
gath erin g of Greek theo logi ans and bish ops at Lyd da-D iosp olis
in Pal-
esti ne, he exp lain ed his teac hing abo ut the rela tion betw een grac
e and
free will to the syn od in suc h a way that he was pro nou nce d ort hod
ox-
muc h to Augus ti ne '~ con ster nation ,l7 Augusti ne's defe nsiv e acco
unt of
thes e proc eed ings , On (he Procudings of Pdagius. was one of the few wor
ks of
his to be tran slated into Greek, perhaps dur ing his lifet ime , md
was
incl ude d in the Biblioth«a of the nint h-ce ntur y scho lar and patr iarc
h of
~R H~~O~." or THI I O U'

Constantinople Photlus From a compaTl~on of the decree, Augustme's

rcauion, and Photius\ tre.ltment, it IS evident that for lastl'rn Chri~tian
thought the Augustinian formulation of the antithesis of grate and free-
dom, or even of nature and grace, repre~cntcd a wrong question, to
which any answer would have to be wrong.
In the West, the supreme paradigm for the relation between nature
and grace, and hence bct\\oeen freedom and grace. was the apostle Paul.
HIS experience of the violem intervention of Cod when he was thrown to
the ground and blll1ded on the road to Damascm, which was recounted
three separate times in the Book of Acts and ratheT differenlly in hiS self-
defense at thc beginmng of th~ Epistle to the Galatiam, was an experience
of radical discontinuity between what he had been and what he be
lame. J8 This radical diswntinuity compelled him to look for cominuity;
hence. in the nimh, temh. and eleventh chapters of the Ep].~de to the
Romans he affirmed both his identification with hiS past and his drastic
break with that past. lll That Pauline model of conversion wa, at work in
the thought of Augll~tine. When, in the famous s<.;ene in the garden,
Augustine heard the voice saying ·'ToUt, ltgt rPlck. it up, read il],·· what he
read was a passage rrom Paul on the theme of dis<:ontinulI)· with the
past. JO Paul had admonished the Romans, ;l.Ild was now admonishing
Augustme: '·Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and
wantonness, nOt in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Je~u~ Christ,
and make not provi~ion for the flesh to fulfil the lust~ thereof" J I And, as
Augustine had said somewhat earlier, ·'with great eagerness. then, I
fastened lIpon the \enerable \\Tinngs of thy Spirit and prillcipa.lly upon
the apostle Paul·· H Again in the. thought of Martin Luther, Paul and a
pa.ssage from his Epistle to the Romans set the pa.ttcrn: ··The Justice of
God is revea.led in the gospel from faith to faith [Iustilia enim Dd in to rel-datuf
a fide in fideml.·· JJ As he described in the autobIographical foreword to his
collected latin works, an opologlo pro \110 sua \Hiuen in 1545. the year
before his death, Luther as a monk and novice excgete bad struggled O\er
the meaning or thIS p.ls.uge because he assumed that '·the Ju~tlce of Cod"
referred. as he thought it did throughout Scripture, to the quality of the
divine nature by which God was JUSt and hy which therefore God con-
 1i~t. O "A:D OF T Il l l0 RD 89

dem ned sin. All of that cha nge d, and as he said "J fdt that I ...
had
ente red paradise itSelf thro ugh ope n gate s," whe n he perc eive d that
Paul
wal' spea king inst ead abo ut the jUl't icc with whi ch God end owe
d the
sinn er in jUSlification. II cam e, not as the con sun una tion of the
hum all
que st, but as the inte rven tion of tilt! divi ne initiative. H Luth er's doc
trin e
of natu re and grace, then , whi le Significantly differeD[ from Aug usti
ne's ,
did emp hasize disc onti nuit y. And whe n, in 152 5, he carr ied
011 his
fam ous con trov ersy with Eras mus and wro te The Bondage of the Will
. he
beli eved himi>elf to be exp oun ding the teac hing of Paul as he den
ied to
the hum an will befo re con vers ion any pmi tive fUlic tion ing tOw
ard the
grace of God and as he put the who le action on the sove reig n wiJl of
Cod .
Thi nke rs of the Eastern trad itio n, in con tnst , char acte risti call y ~ub
­
slitu ted a com plementa rity for this anti thes is. This doe s not mea
n that
they in the slig htes t dim inis hed the mir acle of the grace of God .
wh im
they exto lled in pros e and poetry. pray ing as thou gh everythi
ng de-
pen ded on divi ne grace but acting as thou gh eve ryth ing dep end
ed on
hum an works. But they inte rpre ted grac e sim ulta neo usl} ' as a
tota lly
une arne d di vine gift and as an affi rma tion of con tinu ity wit h natu
re and
creation -an d ther efor e with free dom . In rhe para dox ical form ula
of a
lead ing seve nth -cen tury Byzantine thin ker, Max imu s Confessor,
God
"gra ms a rewtlrd a~ a gift to thos e who have believed him . namely,
eter nal
deif icat ion. " H Apparelllly "rew ard" and "gif t" wer e not m utua lly
exc lu-
sive but com plem enta ry con cep ts that toge ther pro duc ed .-.alvation
as
"dei fica tion ."J6 One scho lar poin ted out, in com men ting on such
pas-
sages as rh is. that it "ViiS "poSSible for Ma.ximu.'> to say, on the one
han d,
that ther e is no pow er inhe rent in hum an natu re whi ch is able to
deify
man , and yet, on the othe r, that Cod become~ man insofar as man
has
deif ied himself."37
That char acte risti call y Eastern emp hasi s on con tinu ity cam e to voic
e
in a high ly pers ona .lleH er wri tten by Basil of Caesarea, prob ably
m the
year 375 :

The teac hing abo ut God whi ch r had received as a boy from
my blessed mot her and my gran dmo ther Mac rina , I have ever
90 KA ~ O " AID Of T H~ LOU>

held \\ith increased conviction. On my coming to ripe years

of reason I did not shift my opinions from one to another, but
larried OUt the prindples delivered to me by my parents. Just
as the seed when it grows is first tiny and then gets bigger but
always presmes its iden{J(Y, not chonged in kind though 8rodually p<'rfened in
growth, so ! reckon the same doctrine to have grown in my case
through gradually advancing stages. What r hold now has not
replaced what I held at the beginning.38

Significantly, what Basil said there about the lontinuity of his maturation
in the context of Christian nurture he even applied. with significant and
appropriate modifications, to the relation between Christianity and Clas-
sical culture, especially in his famous leiter-essay, known in English as
ExlwrtGlion to Youths as to How They Shall Beit profit by the Writings of Pagan Authors, in
which he urged his nephews to plumb the depths of the classical Greek
tradition and to learn from it lessons for their Christian faith and life. 39
And in the thought of his brother, Gregory of Nyssa, quoted earlier. that
affirmation of continuity and that insistence on freedom even in relation
to divine grace came to new depths of insight.-1-0
But in suppOrt of that characteristically Byzantine emphasis on the
active role of free will as it accepted the word and grace freely given by
God, the active response of the Mother of God in the annunciation as she
accepted the word and grace of God was a key incident. As the Eastern
thinkers interpreted it. when she became the paradigm, the incarnation
both in all its novelty and in its profound continuity with everything that
she had been until then could be affirmed. Therefore she was "full of
grace [kecharitiimmF]," as the angel Gabriel had said ill saluting her.41 For
"lhe entire treasure of grace" dwelt in her,41 but even though it was [he
grace of the Almighty, it dwelt in her by her own free will. Her free
response to the will and grace of God made her, in a unique sense, a (0-
laborer with God - as the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians. "We. then,
as workers together rsynergoi] with him"'"I3- an d therefore also an exem-
plar offreedom. In many of the centuries of thought and reflection about
Mary, that role as exemplar may have been overshadowed by a cramped
 HA~D)jA I DOfTI"l o aD 'I

rend itio n of her wor ds "Be hold the han dma id of the Lord ," so llla
llhe
full dyn ami sm was lost. But repeatedly the pow er of the ann unc
iatio n
narrative man age d to reassert ilScifin all its vigor: "Fo r he hath rega
rded
the low eslate of his han dma iden : for. beh old, from hen cefo rth all gen
er-
atio ns shall call me bles sed. " ....
As if to refu te. or at least to cou nter bala nce by a pree mpt ive ling uist
ic
strike, the quie tisti c inte rpre tatio n that wou ld be imp ose d on this port
rait
of Mary as, in her own wor ds, Ancillo Domini, the Han dma id of the Lord
, the
Medieval portrayal ohh e Virgin also applied to her the words: "A wom
an
of valo r who will find ?"H celebrating her as Mulier Fortis, the Wo man
of
Valor. WhiHever the orig inal Heb rew term ~ayjJ may have mea nt
in the
con text of the clos ing cha pter of the Book of Pro ver bs-s eve ral mod
ern
tran slat ions of the Bible into English seem to agree on the rend
erin g
"cap able " her e-th e Heb rew vocable did allow for the mea ning "va
lor" ;
and both th e Greek translation in the Septuagint, oodrtia (this bein
g the
wor d for the classical virt ue of "for titu de" ), and the Latin tran slat
ion in
the Vulgate, fortis. under!>tood iI that way. Wo m an of Valo r thus bec
ame a
strik ing form ula for the mot if and met aph or of Mary as war rior
and
cha mpi on, as con que ror and lead er.
The mos t infl uen tial exp ress ion of th at mOlif. at any rate in Wes tern
Chr iste ndo m, was the eve ntua l Latin translati on of the wor ds of pUn
ish-
men t add ress ed by God to the serp ent afte r th e fall of Adam and Eve,
to
read: "I shall put enm ity betw een you and the wom an , and between
you r
seed and her seed; she will crus h you r hea d, and you will bru ise her
heel
[Inimicitias ponam inter It et mulimm, et stmm tuum tI. santi] iIlillS; ipsa contertl. capu
t
tuum, et IU insidiabais coleantl) dus J. " 4 6 The re is clear evidence that this
was
not how Jero me tran slate d the text; for as a Heb rew scholar, he kne
w that
the pro nou n sho uld not be rend ered with "she ," and one ofthe earl
iest
man uscr ipts of his tran slat ion, as well as an early use of it by Pope
Leo I,
carr ied the read ing ipsc:', not ipsa ... 7 Nev erth eless, the read ing even
tually
bec ame ipsa. for reas ons that are not clear. Yet even whe n it did.
early
inte rpre ters of the fem inin e pro nou n app lied it to the chu rch as the
one
who had crus hed . and was con tinu ing to crus h, the hea d o f Satan." s
In
his com men tary on Genesis the Venerable Sed e, in who se Ang lo-S
axo n
9! HA "D'1 A ID OF T Hf lO ~D

England the cult of Mary was flourishing,49 quoted the passage with the
fem inine pronoun but declared that "the woman crushes the head of the
serpent when the holy chun.:h dispels the snares and venomous lures of
the devj)";so and another eighth-century monk, Ambrosius Autpertus,
celebrating "the daily victory of Christ in the church," saw this victory
prefigured in the words spoken to the serpent in Paradise, that ipsa, the
woman, would crush his head. S I But it was already standard practice to

identify the church with Mary, as the first one to have believed in lhe
Incarnation and, between Good Friday and Easter, the only one to have
believed in the resurrection, By far the dominant Medieval interpretation
of the feminine pronoun in this passage, therefore, was the Mariological
one. s 2 Having already applied to Mary the first half of the statement to the
serpent, "I shall put enmity between you and the woman," Bernard of
Clairvaux continued, "And if you still doubt that he has spoken of Mary,
listen to what follows: 'She will crush your head: For whom was this
victory reserved except for Mary? Beyond doubt it was she who crushed
the venomous head,"SJ
Both biographically and iconographically, there would appear to be
some poSSibility of connecting this first so-called messianic prophecy
with the complex symbolism in Johannes Vermeer's late paWling of circa
167 J -7 4, Allegory of UncJ reith. "Only in Allegory of Faith," writes Arthur K.
Wheelock, Jr., "does he explicitly incorporate abstract theological COll-

cepts into a visual vocabulary similar to his other paintings,"'" Vermeer

was an adult convert to Roman Catholicism ss His conversion was re-
flected in a number of his paintings. Lncluding Chris! in the House()f Mary and
Martha, which is often read as a depiction of the Medieval interpretation of
the two sisters as representative of the relation between the contemplative
and the active life. Scholars have identified the female figure III his Woman
Holding a Balanc( as the Virgin Mary, the Mediatrix standing between the
human race and divine judgment. 56 That judgment was depicted not
only by the balance on which, as the words of Isaiah had said, "the
nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the
balance, " 57 but by the painting of the last judgment on the wall behind
her,
 HAI< DMA ID Of THE LORD 9l

Because, as the Second Vat ion Cou ncil was to put it in ItS dec ree lumD
l
Gmtium. "Mary in a certain way unit es and mir rors with in hers elf
the
cen tral trut hs of the faith [maxima fidei placito in se quodlllllmodl) unit tt
mu -
btrotJ."58 a pain ting bea ring me title Allegory I)f Faith (or Allegory
of the
Faith) cou ld well con cen trat e on her. In the fore grou nd. in a dire
ct
allusion to the narrative of the fall o f Adam and Eve and the wor
ds of
Genesis. was the blee ding can;ass of a serp ent. 1[5 hea d crus hed by a ston
e.
and next to it ,m apple; ove r it stoo d the vict orio us form of a ....,om an.
wit h
her foot on a glob e of the wor ld. The pain ting on the wall. whi ch
as in
Woman Holding a Balance seems to have bee n inte nde d as a com men tary
on
the action in the pain ting . port raye d the cruc ifix ion. whe re me serp
ent
did bru ise the heel of the Mo ther and of the Son but was him self
van-
qUi shed ; in add itio n, as if to mak e sure that the view er did not miss
the
pOint. ther e was a crucifix on the waU. The re does not seem to be any
way.
even with a mag nify ing glass. to iden tify the title of the ope n boo k.
muc h
less its specific wor ds. lfi! was a Bible. in Dut ch or perh aps mor e likel
y in
Latin. the text seem s to have bee n near the end . Cou ld that perh aps
have
bee n the vision of the Wo man Clo thed wim the Sun from the Boo
k of
Revelation~s\l Or wou ld it be com plet ely far-fetched
to speculate that the
boo k mig ht have bee n a Heb rew Bible, wru ch was easily availabl
e in
seve ntee nth- cen tury Holland. and ther efor e have bee n ope n ncar
the
beg inni ng rath er than near the end -an d specifically at the wor ds of
the
Lord to the serp ent. but inte rpre ted in acco rdan ce with the acce pted
Latin
translation and graphically doc ume nted by that ven omo us hut
now
harm less serp ent' s head?
Ano ther of the ways in whi ch Mary sho wed hers elf to be the wom an
of valo r spo ken of in Proverbs was ber role as lode star and guid
e of
mar iner s. "Mary. the star of the sea [Moria moris sldlaJ." a nam e that
was
said to have bee n given her from on h igh. 6o The nam e was thou ght
to
have bee n pro phe sied in the oracle. "A star shall com e forth out
of
laco b."61 Beo use "thi s class of [nauticalJ met aph or is extraord inar
ily
wid espr ead thro ugh out the Middle Ages. "61 the ima geo fMa ry as the
star
guid ing the sh ip of faith was especially attractive. even thou gh
it de-
pen ded at least in part on a trick of language. Its orig ins seem to
lie in
9~ H ~ NDM~ ID Of f Ht tO~O

Jerome's etymology for the name "Mary" as ".1 drop of water from the
sea (stilill mllrisJ," which he preferrl!d to other explanations. This etymol-
ogy was taken over hy Isidore of Seville. but in the process "drop [stillll)"
had become "star [sttllo]." On that basis, apparently in the ninth century,
an unknown poet composed an InRucntial hymn. hailing Mary as the Star
of the Sea, the nourishing Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin , the Gale of
Heaven.

Ave, !naris stella,

Dei mater alma
atque semper virgo,
felix caeli porta.&S

Soon the title became a part of the homiletical language about the Virgin,
as well as of theological literature; but it was especially in poetry that the
symbol ohhe courageou~ Mary as the lodestar of voyagers through life
found expre~sion. As Lodestar, she was seen as cOlllinuing to overcome
Ihe enemies and the storms, and therefore as cOlllinuing to be the
Woman of Valor who was the Handmaid of the Lord.
 v''S'"' En!'!, /I)Unh!lf f"'Tind, ,i~!h ,entury
!coo of !h. t) The Clndan<l Museum 01 An,
1996, LC<1Iw',1 c: Hlnnl, Jr.. Ikq"I"i 1967.114
7 The Adornment of Worship
and the Leader of the Heavenly Choir

And Miriam the prOpMltSS. tbe sister of Aaron, took a Ilmbrd in her hfl!ld;
and all the women wmt (lUI afta her with timbrds and wilh dances.
And MJriom Ilnswmd them, Sing yc to tilt Lord, for he Mth lriumpho:lll!oriously:
(he horse and his rider hath he Ihrom! into the sea.
-Exodus 15:20-2 J

he identification of Mary, mother of Jesus, with Miriam. si.~ler of

Mose~, was not only a theme of the Qur'an I but had long before been a

theme of Christian lypology. Commenting on the words of the psalm

"Among them \'iere the damsels playing with timbrels [in mroio iLlVC!lClIJO(
cympanistrioc],"2 Augustin e identified the Virgin Mary as "nostra tym-
pallistria," because, like Miriam before the children of Israel, she led the
people of Goo and the angels of heaven in the pr.lise of the Almighty.j
And thomands of English-speaking ProteStant congregations in Lhis cen -
tury-mOSt of them without realizmg that they were carryin g on this
typology of Miriam and Mary, and many without realizing thai they were
addressing Mary at all-have attributed 10 her a role as the adornment of
worship and leader of the heavenly choir, in the words of John A. L
Riley's hymn of 1906. "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones"·

o higher than the cherubim,

More glorious than the seraphim.
Lead their praises, Alleluia!

"
 Thou Bearer ohh' eternal Word,
Most gracious, magnify the Lord, Allduia!

which was to say that when the angels of heaven, the cherubim and
seraphim, praised God, they were led by one whom the Archangel Gab-
riel had hailed as "most gracious" and who had begun her own hymn
with the words "My soul doth magnify the Lord," the one who, being the
Theotokos, was the Bearcr of the eternal Word of God, the Logos-made-
flesh. Such sentiments about her, of course, would probably have been
harder to voice from the pulpItS of such congregauons than from the
•
hymnals in their pews.
Even In congregation.~ where the as.~odation of the Virgin Mary with
worship came naturally, moreover, she figured much more prominently
outside the officiaJ public liturgy than within it. In the liturgy, the prayers
of the Eastern Liturgy ofSoint BIni! and Liturgy of$aint John Chrysostom invariably
invoked her illterc:essions.~ Above all, the hymn Ak<lthi~tos (whose tide
meant "not sitting down")~ multiplied its celebration of her as "unwed
bride" and obJcct of the church's praises, and 11 was in turn reflected in
the visual arts.6 In the Western liturgy of the Mass, too, the recitation of
the saints above who were Joined with the church on earth in petition.
praise, and thanksgiving accorded her pride of place. Nevertheless, two
of the most widespread and popu\a.r dL'\'Olions to Mary in the Western
tradition we.re nonliturgical in character. The first was usually associated
in its origins with the Dominican Order and the sC{;ond with the Francis-
em Order, although both of them became well-nigh universal through-
out Roman Catholicism. The pranice of the rosary was probably not
originated by Saint Dominic. as conventional wisdom supposed on the
basis of the unsubstantiated legends recounted by Alan de la Roche in his
narrative of revelations. Nevertheless, the rosary did have special ties with
the Order of Prcac:hers.7 Following a devotional practice that appeared
also oUL~ide Christianity. for example in Hinduism, Buddhism. and Is-
lam, the rosary was a string of beads {Q be used as a mnemonicdevkc for
the recitation of prayers. In fact, the very word brod in English came from
the universal Germanic word for "to pray." as in the modern German belen
and the modern English word bid; and, as the Oxrord English Dictiono.ry
explained, "the name was transferred from 'prayer' to the small globular
bodies used for 'telling beads: i.e., counting p rayers Solid. from which the
other senses naturally followed. "8 With some variations from one tradi-
tion of obserVAnce to Another, the prAyers of the rosa.ry consisted of ! 5
recitations of the Patti" Nosta, I 5 sets of 10 redtaUons of the Me Moria, and
J5 recitations of the Gloria Patri, each of the sets of fifteen prayers being
conce.nrrated on one of the mysteries of the redemption; thus Afull cycle
of the rosary included 1 so prayings of the Ave Mario. 9
The Angdus, by contrast, was connected with the admonition issued
in J 269 by Bonaventure, as minister generAl of the Order of Friars
Minor, that FranOSColn friars imitate Funds of Assisi by reciting Me
Marias in response to the ringing of the evening bell for prayer. This was
expanded, app<lIently during the fourteenth century, into An Angelus in
the morning (first noted at Pa.rma III 1317-18), at noon (Prague in
1386), and in the evening (Rome in 1327, elst.'Where even earlier).lo It
also achieved wide circulation Among the lAity; md it was, for exAmple,
incorpomed into the first act of Puccini's Tosm, in the prAyer of the
sacristan, as was the Te Drum Loudamus into the mighty chords of the
closing SCene of that act. The Angdus took its m,me from the words of
the Gospel ofLuke: "Angelus Domini ad Mariam, Ave gratia plena, ... "11
Through these two extraliturgical forms of ,·\,orship as well as through
various components of the liturgy itself, the history of Mary embedded
itself in the Imguage md the spiriruality of countless believers through-
Out the Western world.
But the area of worship in which Mary performed as leader most
elTectively was in t.he adornment of icons. n For III the eighth, ninth,
and temh centuries the political. religiOUS, and artistic future of the
Byzantine empire and of Byzantine culture was at stake in a struggle for
its very identity, during the several successive attacks of Iconoclasm on
the use of images in Christian worship. The argument against images.
and eventUAlly the argument for them as well, came to be based on the
question of whether one could portray the divine-human person of
Christ ill an icon. But the argument also involved in a speCial way the
person of the Vlrgm, JUSt as the foundlllg of Byzantium had.1J Accord-
illg to their opponents. the IcOlloclasts attacked not only the wor:.hip of
icons generally but the onhodox dC\'OIion to Mary sp<!uficallrl-t They
were also reported to have rejected Ihe orthodox belief in the special
intercession of Mary on behalf of the church. I.>
In respon!>C to such atlacks, orthodox theolo~ian~-such as john of
Damascus, who argued that "the honor paid to an image was meallt not
for the depiction but for the person depicted"'16-felt compelled to
define how the various forms of "worship (proskynem)'" that Christians
were permmcd to render to crealUres were to be differentiated from the
"adoration [Iotrtio]"" tint could be addres~ed only to God the Creator.
nOllO any creature. 17 If paid to idoh, such worship was (in the original
term) "idololatry [eidi5lolotreia]," I 8 although the lconod\lle~ insisted that
this term did not apply at aU to their worship of icons. But by "God the
Creator"' orthodox theology since the Council of Nicaea and even much
earlier had rneillll God the Holy Trimty. Father. Son, and Holy Splri!, to
each of whom it was legitimate to pay a "wor~hip [proskynfsis]" that was
"'adoration ['Otfeta],"' exchlsl\'e!y restricted to the true God Such "adora-
tion [latreia]," moreover. was addres~ed, as it had been ~ince the New
Te~tament, to the perwn of Jesus Christ: whereas Clirh[ had said on the
cross, according to Luke, "Father, mto th)' hand~ I commend my
spirit." 19 Stephen, the first Christian mart}'r, had, aj~o according to
Luke, called out "Lord jesus, receive m}' spirit,"20 thus moving with
evidem eilse from a prayer thilt had heen addressed to the Father (0 the
same prayer that was now addressed to the Son. For "'at the name of
Jesu~,"the apostle Paul declared, "every knee should bow, of [hings in
heaven, and things in eanh, and things under the earth, and every
tongue should COllfes~ that jesus Christ is Lord. to the glory of God the
Father,"21 To Christian orthodoxy, this "bowing the knee" and '\.,.or-
ship [proskyntsisJ"' was genume and complete "adoration (lamia 1," and it
lllduded as its proper obJcct the entire per~on of the Son of God
incarnate-not his divine nature alone, since his divine nature was not
alolle aftcr the incarnation but was united, permanently and "inscpara
bly [achi5rJSlosl"' (as the Council of Chakcdon had declared in 451),22 \0
 ADORN!04U<T Of WOHHlf 101

the human nature, which could not be the object of" adoratio n [latRia]"
in and of it~elf. being a creature, but which could and should be adored
in the undivided person of the God-man.
All other orthodox "worship [proskynesis)." by contrast, wa... simple
"reverence [douleio]." hence not a violation of the First Commandment.
In at least some passages orhis works, 101m of Damascus did distinguish
between "adoralion [lamia]" and "revt':rence [doullKlJ."n But by a cu-
rious turn of linguistiC h istOry, the best available documentation for this
distinction wa~ not in his writings, nor in those of any other Greek
patristic or Byzantine thinken; at all. but in Latin Christian authors.
above aU Augustine o f Hippo. Augustine wrote in his City of God:

For this is the worship which is due to the Divinity. or. to

speak more accurately, to the Deity; and to express this wor-
ship in a single word. as there does not occur to me any
Latin term sufficiently exact. I shall avail mysdf. wherever
necessary, of a Greek word. Latreia. whent':ver it occurs in
Scripture. is rendered by the ·\-....ord "service." But that service
which is due to men. and m reference to which the apostle
writes that servantS must be subject to their own masters
(Eph. 6:5], is usually designated by another word in Greek
[douleia). whereas the service which is paid to God alone by
worship, is always. or almost always. called la(uia in the usage
of those who wrote from the divine oracles.2~

ThiS pa.<;sage was among the first Wltnesses---or, ,II any rate, among the
earliest preserved witnesses-to make the distinction specific. 1S It must
be added that for Augustine to occupy that position in the history of
Greek was somewhat ironic, in view of his repeated admi... ~ i o ns about
rus unreliable knowledge of Greek: he had developed an imense dislike
for the Greek language. even for the reading of Homer. as a school-
boy,16 and then as a Catholic bishop defending the Nicene doctrine of
the Tnnuy he had to confess that he d id not full y grasp the terminologi-
cal subtleties in Ihe fundamental trinitarian distinctions made by Greek
theologians during the preceding several generations. 17
I()l ~DO~" "' ["'l 0' WOHliH

As TheOlokos, Mary- and that included the Mary of the icons-

was the legitimate object of orthodox Chrisllan "wor'>hip LProskynesis]."
Such di~tinc[ions were all the more necessary because of the many
pO~UUt'5 and gestun:s of respect toward many persons that were prc-
M:ribcd not only by Byzanl1ne piety but by Byzantine social custom.
Already III classical Greek mage, all of these expressions of respect al all
levels could come under the category of "worship [proskyOOis1." which
therefore not only meant to "make obeisance 10 the gods or their
images. falJ down and worship" but pertained especially 10 "the Orien-
tal fashion of prosuaung oneself before kings and superiors."U ThaI
fasbion was exaggerated ~till further by what Charles Diehl called "the
thousand refinements of the precise and somewhat childish etiquette
which regulated every act of the Imperial life" in COnstantinople. 29 In
thiS profUSion of aCts of "worship,"30 there needed to be a special wa}'
of speaking about the worship of God and about the worship of the
~aints. and particularly about the worship of the Virgin Mary. Therefore
Medieval Latin theology, Illustrated for example by Thomas Aquinas
(who u~ed the Greek terms In their Latin form), found that the simple
dJ~!l1IC1ioll between "adoration [Iatrdo]'" and "reverence [d()ul(ia)." as it
been drawn by John of Dam~cus. did not do fuIlJustice to the special
poSition of the Theotokos. For ~he was certaillly less than God. but JUSt
as certainly she was more than an ordinary human being and more th .. n
an}' other sainI; therefore she was not entitled to latria, yet she was
entitled to more than dulia. 31 For her cultus, then, the appropriate term
was hyprrduha 3 1 After the Middle Ages. the Latin church was to find the
distinction between latna and dulia (includmg hypt'rdulJo) addmonally
useful when, in the aftermath of the Reformation. Protestanr polemiCS
was regularly accusing lhe church of "Mariolatry."ll "Mario-Iatry"
would have to he defined as a form of latria paid to Mar}'; and extrava-
gant though the language of prayers and hymns addressed to her did
undoubtedly be1::ome also 111 the West, this distinction was intended to
stand a~ a barrier against "Mariolatry"- albell a barrier that may some-
urnes ha\'1! been all but invisible to lhe piet)' of ordinary believers,
whether Western or Eastern, in their prayers to her and to her icon. H As
 AOO ," Nloiun Of W O~S tl" 103

even the defenders of the icons had to acknowledge, the relition be ~

tween technical theology and the piety of ordinary believers was diffi~
cult to handle. ls
Perhaps the most dramatic of all the traditional ponrayal.s of the
Virgin Mary in Byzantine art was the so~called Deesis (from the Greek
word ddsis, entreaty or interce~ion). 36 This was the word regularly used
in classical Greek for an "entreaty" of one kind or another. 37 In Byzan~
tine Greek it was employed for various secular petitions and supp!ica~
tions. such as those addressed to the emperor by his subjects. 38 But It
also be~ame the standard term in patristic Greek, and then in Byzantine
Greek, for intercessory prayers: for those addressed by the church "not
only to God but also to holy men, though not to others"; for the prayer
which Christ as the eternal Mediator presented to the Father: and also
for the prayers that the saints, and especially the Mother of God, as
created mediators presented to Christ and to the Father on behalf the or
church.39 The Deesis as an art form was divided into three sc<:tions or
pand s. At the center was the figure of Christ as Lord. On either side of
Christ were, pleading w ith Christ on behalf of sinners, the Mother of
God and John the Baptist (often identified as "the Forerunner [ho Pro~
dromos ]"). +0 The Deesis could be presented in artistic creations of var-
ious sizes. On one tiny eleventh-century Byzantine reliquary, which is
just over three inches square when folded, the Deesis appears in cloi-
sonne, its two panels of Mary and John folding over the panel of the
central figu re. By contrast, the uncovering of the mosaic of the Deesis
on a wall in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul shows !.his Byzantine motif on a
very large scale.
Historians of Byzantine art and architectu re have exploited the s.ig-
nificance of the Deesis with sensitiVity and skill," I establishing the term
Dttsis in English usage. Unfortunately, hiSloria.ns of Byzantine spirituality
and theology have not im'csligaled the Deesis w ith equal thoroughness,
despi te the profound and suggestive way it presented several of the
central motifs in the Eastern Christian understanding of the entire" dis-
pensation [oikonomio]" of the history of salvation. The juxtaposition of
Mary and John the Baptist in !.he Deesis was a way of identifying the
two figure~ who, according to the Chri\tlan undersLandtng of the hi!>
tory of ,ahation, stood OJ] the border between the Old T(,~!d.ment and
the New, A((ording to the ~aying of Chri ,l in the Gospel, the line of the
Old T~tamem prophets had come only as far a~ john the BaptiSL-1l This
wa..., taken by Ju'>tln Martyr in the second century to prove that after
john there would no longer be any prophet!> among the people of
],racl.'o Zechariah , the Baptist\ r~thcr, wa~ a priest of the "tribe of
Levi," who continued the !>.lcerdotal nledLation betwecn God and the
people gOtng b~ck to Aaron. John's parenl.~ were the retipiems of an
"annunCIation [tuDngdismosj" by the angel Gabriel, analogous to that
which canl(> a few months'later to the Virgin Mary, COUSIll of John \
mother, EhzabeLh.H According to Gregory of Nyssa, "the gift in him
W.l5 pronounced by him who sees thc !>ecre l ~ of a man to he greater
than any prophet '!>_ "i ~ For Christ him~elf had said about John the Bap-
ti~L":-.lever ha~ therc appeared on earth a mother's son greater than
John the Baptise "41,
No mother\ son was greater than John the Baptist, but onc mother\
daujjhur walo greater than an)' mother's son or daughtcr, namely, Mary the
Mother of God, whom Gregory of Nyssa earlier in the same treatise
called "Mary without !>tain (amiantos]. "i7 Not only iconographically but
thL"Ologically, she occupied a lmique place in Eastern Christendom, which
was, as we have seen, where bUlh the devotion to her and the spec\lla·
tion about her had been concentrated throughoUl the early centuries of
Christian hl~tory, The devotion 10 Mary had found Ib ~upreme expTt;S-
sion in the Byzantine liturgy, From ils ~ourccs in the Greek church
rattlCfS and in Byzantine Christianity, Eastern Mdriology went on to
exert a deci~ivt' influence on Western interpretations of MaT}' through-
out the patristic .and carl)' Medieval periods, with church ruhen; hke
Ambrose of Milan functioning as transmitters of Greek Mariology 10 the
Latin church,iS
Behind the differences hetween the Latin and the Greek tradition'>
lay an even more profound difference, identified b} the teaching of
Grrtk Chri~tian theolog, that !>o1lvation conferred on its recipients noth-
ing les!> tllan a transfoTmallon of their very htllnanity, hy which they
 part ake of che reality of che Divine. Anders Nyg ren saw the idea
thac
"the hum an is rai~ed tip co the Divine" as one that the Greek chu
rch
fath er Irenaell5 shared "wi th Hel lenistic piety generally. ".9 And
ther e
\','ere dea r ech oes o f Hel leni sm in the Chn sria n version of the
doc -
trin e. so But this idea o f ~al vatio n as deification or the05is~1 was
nOt
exclusively Greek: it app eare d in various of Ihe Latin fathers, incl
ud-
ing Augusti ne, and . as Nyg ren ack now ledg ed. it '\"as even occ asio
nal-
ly ech oed 10 the writ ings of t)le ProtestaIl( Ref orm ers and thei
r fol-
lowers. s2 Ac alm ost the same Lime as lhe tapestry Icon of tM Vi'lJin,
wruch
illustrates this cha pte r. was crea ted . a Latin Christian wri ter inco
rpo -
ra ted the idea o f divinizatio n into a wor k of phil oso phic al reflection
iliat
ach ieved wid e circulation in the Middle Ages: "Since that men are
mad e
blessed by the obc aini ng of blessedness. and blessedness IS noth ing
else
but divinity, It is man ifes t that men are mad e blessed by the obta illln
g of
divi nity. And as men are mad e lust by the obta inin g o f justice, and
wis e
by the obtainin g of wbd om , so they who obt ain divi nity mus t nee
ds in
like man ner bec ome gods. Wh eref ore eve ryon e that is bles~ed is
a god ,
but by natu re there is only one God ; but ther e may be man y by
part i-
cipalioll."53 The Idea cou ld , mor eov er, lay clai m co explicit bibl
ical
grou ndin g. As it stoo d, '" h ave said, Ye are god s, " was a mys teriOUS
Old
Testament stat eme nt in the Book of Psalms, add ress ed to the rule
rs of
this world. 54 But as quo ted by Chr ist in the New Test ame nt, this
state-
men t bec ame pro of that "he called them gods, untO who m the wor
d of
God came, and the scri ptur e can not be brok en." s5 Beca use beli ever
s in
Chr ist wer e pree min entl y "tho se unto who m the wor d of God cam
e,"
and amo ng them this was pree min entl y true of Mary, it follo
wed ,
acco rdin g to the Greek Christiom trad itio n, that the y-a nd abo
ve all
sh e -w ere also p reem i nen tly thos e who sho uld he called "go ds."
For
this, too, was a "scr iptu re that cann ot be bro ke n,"
The Scri ptur e that prov ided justifica tion for the idea, and that ther
e-
fore bec ame Ihe locu " dass icus ciled in sup por t of it especial
ly 111
Byz anti ne theology. was the arre stin g New Test.rn1enl form
ul.ii.:
"W hereby are given unt o us exc eed ing grea t and pre dou " prom
ises :
that by the~e ye mig ht be part aker s of the divi ne natu re rlhe.ias koioo
ooi
physeiis], hilving escilped the corrupllon that is in the world through
IU~L"s(' BOlh the negative emphasis o f the Greek church fathers on
salvation as escape from "tranSiency, corruption [phlhorn]" and their
positive emphasis on salvation as parrkipation in the divine nature werc
articulated in this one New Testament passage. Thus the Greek word
Iheiisis. deification or divinization, came to stand fo r a distinctive view of
the meaning of salv,tllon, summarized in the Eastern patristic formulil.
current alreildy in the second and tlllTd centuries: "God became human
"D tllat man might become divine." This VICW had then been funda-

mental to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity; as Athanilsius

•
had put it. "By the participallon of the Spirit, we are knn mto the
Godhead" 57 While striving 10 protect the hi blical formula of participa-
tion in Ihe divine l),nUTe from any trace of pantheism by emphaSIzing
the inviolable transcendence of a God beyond language or thought or
even being, the Greek fathers and their Byl'..iInline pupils strove no less
aSSiduously to give concrete content to its promise of iI humanity made
divine thrmlgh the incarnation of the Logos of God in the person of
Jesus Christ.
That concrele comem found its supreme exemplar m the person of
Marr the TheotOkos, also in Russian Orthodox an. ~8 The palllters of the
icons seem to have manifested no hesitation in portraying Mary as
"divinc," and the defenders of the icons often seemed 10 be il.lmost
insoudant in their manner of speaking about her" divine" qualities; for
"divine" wa.'i. llldeed the right \\rord for her as Theotokos_ In its ultimate
significance, Sillvation as deification. like everr heavenly promise. WilS
cschil.tological and could nOl be fully .lchieved by ilnyone here in this
present life on earth. But Mary Wil.S proof positive that it could be
achieved, truly though not fully. and in this world; her portrayal in
icons was evidence of this fact. as was the Magnificat, which was sung
as part of the Orthros. or Morning Office of the Greek churc h ,~~
Icons of Christ Simultaneously presented both "the form of God"
and ··the form of a servant "60 as they had been insepuably unned in his
person through the incarnation. Although llis "divine nature" had /lot
always been perccpuble to his contemporuies behind "the nature of a
 ADO I:<lIo4 £ST Of WOI $H1P 101

slave," whi ch they did see, in the tran sfiguration It had bec ome visi
ble
already in this wor ld ilnd even before his resurrection. This was
ex-
pressed in the earliest preserved mos aic of the lr;lllsfigurauon. who
se
icon ogra phic inte rpre tatio n William Loerke has skillfully con nec ted
to
Maximus Confessor 's theological inte rpre tatio n of the event:

About seventy-five to eighty years after the mosaic wa.~ set,

Maximus the Confessor gave the Transfiguration an imagina-
tive and pro fou nd inte rpre tatio n. He saw Chr ist in this vision
as a sym bol of himself. a m<Ulifestation of the hidd en in the
visible, in whi ch the luminotLs garm ems at onc e c101he the
hum an natu re and reveal the divine. The evcm was not a
fixed image. but an unfo ldin g drama. The brilliant garm ents
of Christ, the cha ngin g tones of blue in the aureole, and the
transparencies in the rays of light com ing from the aureole,
suggest a hidd en force com ing into vie w-t he visual ana-
logue of Maximus' ime rpre lation. 61

And the historical analogue for it, a reality that was at onc e the anticiI»
--
lion and the result of the miracle of the transfiguration of Christ,
was
Mary the Mother of God. She did not have a pre- exis tent divine natu
re,
as Chr ist did. but was com pielely hum an in her orig in, like all oth
er
hum an beings. Yet because she had bee n chosen by God to be
the
TheOlokos, her com plet ely hum an natu re had bee n transfigured;
and
already in this earthly exis tence she had in a special way bec ome
a
"par take r of the divine nalu re," as the Second Epistle of Peter
had
pro mis ed that all who believed in her divine Son would.
The gro und for "deification" as a distinctively E.istern depiction of
S<l.lvation was a distinctively Eastern dep ictio n of the aton eme nt. It
was.
according to Byzantin~ theology, necessary but not sufficient to spea
k of
hum an salvation as the forgiveness of sins. The inle rpre latio n of
Ihe
pil..~sion and cruc ifix ion of Christ as the sacrifice for
si.n -an inte rpre ta-
tion that cam e from Scripture and was therefor e com mon to ru t
and
We st-h ad a corollary im age of ChristllS Victor as the distinctive way
for
the Christian EaSt 10 speak abo ut the myslery of the rede mpt ion. By
his
 victory Christ as Second Adam had con quc red sin and dea th.
and
thro ugh hh transfiguration he had g1\'cn hum anit y a. glimpse of
il~
evelJ(ual destlny; Mary as Second Eve had also mamfested this deSt
iny.
because of her Son and becall~e of the divine life that he had con
fer-
red -fir st on her, and then all all. Such a view of the hum an con diti
on
and of salvation som etim es calTle dangerously close to defining the
sin
of Adam and Eve as the con sequ enc e not of their h,wing transgrelised
the com man dme nts of God but merely of their being temporal
and
finlle; slich a definition of sin would then seem to have manife~t
ed
greater affintlies to Neoplatonism than to the New Testament. But
•
the
verr mllcentraUOIi on Mary the Theotokos as the historical fulfillm
ent
of this prollllse of humanity made divine pre\'ented this view from
falling completely into the Neoplatonic teaching_
As the battle over icolliLing Christ provided the gro und s for defend-
ing the practice of lconizing his Mother. so her icon sup plie d
the
Justifica.tion for the icons of all the othe r saiJlls. The tapestry koo of
tht
Virgm oITered strikIng doc ume ntal lon of that (onneCllon between Mar
y
and the othe r saint.~: surroundl11g the imp osm g figures of the The
-
otok os and the archangels Michael and Gib riel were med alho ns
of
apostles and saints Conversely, the defense of portrilying the divi
ne-
hum an Christ led to a defense of portraying the hum an Mary who
.
thro ugh him and because she was chosen to give birt h to him. had been
llI~de divine. And slllce the con cep t of deific~l1on was
also the funda-
mental constituent of the Byzantine definition of salllthood. it was
all
obviouS extrapolation from these Manological discussions to affirm
that
the saints. 100. were to be iconizeti. How, the kon odu lcs asked. was
it
possible to portray the sup rem e com man der withoUL portraying
his
troops'6Z For the life of Chris I depicted in the icons was nOt merely
the
life he h~d lived whi le on earth dur ing the first cen tury The resurrec
ted
Christ lived on in the life oflt is chu rch -an d in the li\'e.<; of his saints.
It
would . they argued. be a disastrous fo resh orte ning of perspccti\'e on
his
image if the portrayal of that life did not include portrayals of tho~
in
who m it had con ullu ed. and \.... as L"Ontinuing, to make sacred hiSt
ory.
Yet the theology of icons could no! stop even there. The Logos who
se
 ~"<J~""'HNT 0' WOR"'" 109

incarnate form it was legitimate to iconize was himself the living image
of God and the one through whom heaven and earth and all that is
therein had been created. The Mother of God whom it was permissible
to depict on an icon wa.-; the Queen of Heaven. The saints whose lives
were celebrated on the iconostasis and on individual icons were now in
the presence of God in heaven. And standing by, not as recipients of
salvation but nevertheless as participants in the drama, were the angels,
who in the upper zone of this icon attended the exalted Christ and who
in the lower zone stood on either side of his Mother. All of these images
stood in relation to one another, in what Byzantine theology makes it
necessary to call a "great chain of images."
Iconographically as well as theologically, the supreme person repre-
sented on this tapestry Icon of tbe Virgin was not the Virgin Mary but
Christ. As Christ enthroned in glory, he occupied the higher of the two
zones, which, though smailer, was certainly preeminent. In the lower
zone, moreover, the Christ Child was still Christ the Lord, as he grasped
the top of a scroll, probably the scroll of the law. Yet the most promi -
nent figure in size, and in many ways the most striking in style, was the
portrait of Mary the Mother of God seated on her throne, with an
archangel on either side:

On our tapestry the Virgin sits on an elaborately jewelled

throne of Byzantine type \...·ith an enormous red cushion. She
is clad in a simple purple palla and tunic and black shoes.
One cnd of the pallo-or mot~phorion, to use its Greek name -
is draped over her head as a veil; beneath it her hair is con-
cealed by a little white cap on which is an "embroidered"
gold cross. Her head is framed by a large yellow nimbus.
The Christ Child, without a nimbus, is seated in her lap at
the left. He is dressed in a golden-yellow tunic and pallium;
purple clavi decorate the shoulders of the tunic. ... The Vir-
gin's costume is that or a woman of the ordinary classes in
late antiquity. This is the costume in which she is universally
represented on all pre-Iconoclastic Byzantine monuments. Al-
 though never represented in the ciaoorate costume of an em-
press, as was frequently done in contemporary Roman art,
her simple garments are ne\'cnheless consistently purple, the
Lolor re~erved for Byzantine royalty.'",)

Although the Icon of tht Virgm IS a tapestry rather than oil painting, u does
appe.u iLOnographically necessary to associate its distinctive treatment
of the figure of Mary the Mother of God, including the throne, with the
history of the Byzalllllle liturgical and theological definition of Mary
as Theolokos, which would thereafter influence the way she was later
portrayed in the Christian art of the West no less than in that of the
Easc M
GlOtto dl Bondont. Mml~gt of lac V'rg,n. bel"~t" 1304 ."d 1313. >em, cIS'" Chopd. Pidll.
(AllnUtt Arl R~."our~. 1\- Y.)
8 The Paragon of Chastity
and the Blessed Mother

How shcrll this be. s«i119 I know not a man?

- Lukr 1:34

he paradox of Mary as Virgin Mother not only effectively illusrrated

but decisively shaped the fundamental paradox of the Orlhodox and
Catholic view of sexuality, which was epitomized b~' the glorification of
virginity over matrimony- and by the celebration of matrimony, but not
of virginity, as a sacrament. For as Virgin she served as the unique and
sublime paragon of chastity. At the same time as Mother she was uniquely
"blessed among women," as Elizabeth called her and as the words of the
Ave Maria saluted her, not because she was Virgin but specifically because
she was, as Elizabeth went on to say. "the Mother of my Lord." I The
tensions represented by that paradox ran lhrough much of subsequent
Christian history, and especially through the history of the effort to define
the meaning of morality and the Christian life. For this history, too, the
person of Mary was a major force.
Christian asceticism certainly predated Chrislianity. The world early
Christianity entered was experiencing a serie~ of vigorous movemems
dedicated to the denial of the claims of the physical life and to the
cultivation of the disciplines of self-restraint in relation to food, drink,

'"
J Ii '''~ ~ GO' Of CHASti TY

bodily comfort. and above all sexuality.l The classical Greek word Qskesis.
which referred in general 10 practice and discipline. ame to be applied
specifically to these practices of self-remaint and self-deniaP The lan-
guage o f military discipline and of athletic training wa.~ applied to the
moral realm to explain the need for abstinence in the interest of sOllie
greater goal, in this life o r in the life to come. As Marcus Aurelius said.
applying the military metaphor. "life a warfare. a brief sojourning in an
alien land; and after repute. oblivion. Where, then. can llIan find the
power to gUide and guard hiS steps' [n one thing and one alone-
Philosophy. To be a philosopher is to keep umullied and unscathed the
divine spint within hml. so that it may lranscend all pleasure and all
pain. "4 The wntings bearing the name o f the apostle Paul also invoked
mdlta ry language to describe Christian diScipline. S But Paul's most vivid
metaphor fOT ascetic disciphne came from athletics, as practiced ill the
Hellelllsticworld: "Know yenO[ mat they which run in a race run all. but
one receiveth the prizc! So run, that ye may obtain, And every man that
strivClh for Ihe mastery is temperate ill all things Now they do It 10 obtain
a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible [one]. I therefore so run,
not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that bcatetll the air. Butlkeep my
body and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means. when I have
preadlcd to others. 1 myself should be a castaway. "6 Keeping the body
and bringing it under subJectiOn, which dearly was a duty incumbent on
an Christians, eventually became the special province ofthc professional
ascetiC
Sometime~.
though nOl neccs5aniy. the ascetic impulse wa~ rooted in
a metaphysical dualism. whether o r not it was Platonic in origin. a view
of the world and ofhlJman nature according to which human appetites,
and above all ~exual desire. haVing come from a lower source in their
creation and being shared with the lower animals. were in conflict with
the imperatives of the spirit and of the higher nature in human beings. so
that the only war to liberate the mind and spin! was to overcome these
appetitcs through denial. Though not dJTeclly connected with such spec-
ulation, the Illstiruuon of the vestal vIrgins in Rome obliged them 10
preserve their vlTgimty for the duration of their scrvice, normally five
 H~Ar,ONOFCHASTLTr 115

years but sometimes much longer, and subjected them to entombment

alive if they violated il. 7
II seems evident thai at leilSt in p.m the celebration of virginity and
the cultivation of asceticism came about in revulsion against whal were
taken to be the excesses of sexual self-indulgence in Late Antiquity. Later
moralists h ave been fond of quoting Roman satirists like Tacitus, Juvenal,
and Martial on these excesses; even Edward Gibbon, with his ill-con-
cealed scorn fo r monasticism and asceticism. followed Tacitus's "honest
pleasure in the contrast of barbarian [German] virtue with the dissolute
conduct of the Roman ladies," noting that "the most dangerous enemy
[of chastity] is the softness oflhe mind."s As Peter Brown has shown,
there was a widespread sense in the society of Late Antiquity that human
life n eeded {Q be rescued from its tendency to allow me senses unfeHered
reign and that true holiness could be found in rejecting what Gibbon
called "the softness of the mind" in favor ofrestraint. 9 And as this was
true of the individual , so it could be true of SOCiety, which therefore
needed within it the presence of full-time and permanent ascetics who
could be a challenge and an example to those who lived an o rdinary life
of the appetites and the senses.
So pervasive was me ascetic impulse in Late Antiquity mat even
Judaism came under its spell in some places. In the institution of the
Nazarites, described in the Book ofNum bers. Israel had had a group who
bound themselves by sacred vows to live in self-denial, "to separate
themselves untO the Lord."IO The best-known example was Samson.
who at the annunciation by the angel of me Lord to his father, Manoah,
was designated "a Nazante unto God from the womb." II BUlthe jewish
philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus
and Paul, in a treatise entitled On the Contemplative Lik described a further
elaboration of Jewish asceticism in group he called "Therapeutae," men
and women who lived in a monastic community in the Egyptian desert
near Alexandria. Among these. Philo said. "the women also share ... ,
the greater part of whom, though old, are virgins in respect of their
purity (not indeed through neceSSity, as some of the priestesses among
the Greeks are, who have been compelled to preserve their chastity more
lIb PAKA r.O 'l O f C HA U1T\

than they would have dont: of thelT own accord) , but OUt of an adm ir~-
11011 for and love o f wisdom, with which they are dcslrous to pass their
lives, on account of which they are indifferent to the pleasure:. of the
body, desiring not a mortal but an immortal offspring" 11 The 't riking
~imilarities between thl ~ community ofTherapeutae in Hellcnisnc Juda-
i ~m and early Christian monasticism persuaded Eusebius, the first hi~to­
rian of Chri ~tiani ty, that Philo had in fact been describing a Ch ristian
group: qUOIlllg thb. passage, he took such evidence to be "more striking
examples. which aTC to be found nowhere else than III dIe evangelical
religion of the Christians," 13 As the comments of Eu~ebi us indicated,
asceucism and monasticism were beginning to lake firm hold in Ihe
church hy the fo urth cenmry. The most important documentation of t hi~
comes from The Lifr of Saml Antony hy Athanasius of Alexandria, once more
the biography of a monk in the Egyptian desert, bm I hi~ time of a
Christian monk, who learned to "fortify his body with faith. prayers, and
fast ing" even when "the devil took upon himself the shape of a woman
and imitated all her acts simply to begUile Antony." L'i Significilndy. it was
from a latin translation of the life of Antony, perhaps prepan..-d during
Athanasius's hfetime on one of his Wc:;tern ex iles , that Augustine learned
about Christian asceticism. I S
As might have been expected, the apologists for Christian asceticism
fixed 0 1) the Virgin Mary as a model o f the life of virginlt)' and self. denial.
Athanasius did so in his Lena to Virgins. in which he d~ribed Mary in
language intended to motivate the female ascetics to wltom he was
w riting 16 Also notable among such apologi<.ts for the monastic life wa.~
Jerome, whose influence reached manyofhiscontem poranes. For exam-
pie, his "'ong drawn out correspondence" with Augustine on a variety of
subjects, Peter Brown has said. "is a unique document in the Early
Church. For it shows two highly-ciVilized men conducting with studied
couftes)'. a Singular rancorous correspondence." I 7 Jerome's greatest im-
portance in hbtory is certainly his translation o f the Bible mto Latin, but
he made other major contributions. Among these. t\\"o o f the mosl far-
reaching were his monastic foundations and his doctrine of Mary Earl)' in
life, before his o rdination into the priesthood. Jerome lived as a hermit in
 P ~~~GO" Of ClI~ 51ln 117

the Syrian desert at Chalcis, devoting himself to ascetic praClices and to

scholarly study, including the study o f Hebrew, which was to stand him
ill such good stead as commentator and tra nslator of the Jewish Scrip-
tures. A public career followed. at Constantinople and then at Rome as
secretary to Pope Damasus; but even then he was a vigorous proponent of
the ascetic life, persuading a number o f Roman aristocratic women,
including Paula and her daughter, Eustochium, as well as Marcella and
Melania, to give up their lives of privilege and position in the fashionable
society of Rome and to enter monastic commun ities.
These communities were in Palestine, to which in 386 Jerome him-
self emigrated and established a monastery in Bethlehem. Observing that
"in those days no highborn lady at Rome had made profession o f the
monastic lire, or had vemured-so stran ge and ignominious did it then
seem- publicly to call herself a nun," he credited Athanasi us's Life of
Antony for h aving inspired Marcella and other women to the ascetic life. 16
In a letter to E\Jstochium on her mother's death, which he "spent the
labor of twO n ights in dictating" III and which amounted to a miniature
biography, Jerome described PauJa's ascetidsm and the monastic com-
munity of consecrated women that she had headed. "So strictly did Paula
separate them from men ," he explained, "lint she would not allow even
eun uchs to approach them, lest she should give occasion to slanderous
tongues (always ready to cavil at the religious) to console themselves for
their own misdoing."lO In another leiter, addressed to Gaudentius,
which contained some of his most moving statements about the sack of
Rome in 41 0,21 he spoke about the vocation of virginity. Clearly spedfy-
ing, "What [ say I do not say as universally applicable," he nevertheless
asked Gaudentius: "Are you a virgin? Why then do you find pleasure in
the society o f a woman?" And concerning a small girl whom her father
had dedicated to a life of virginity from her infancy, he prescribed that she
"should associate only with girls, she should know nothing of boys and
sho uld dread even p laying wi th them. "U
Jerome was at the same time one of the most inRuenlial i.nterpreters
in the early church of the life and person of the Virgin Mary. Writing
aga inst jovinian, who though himself a monk had attacked wha.t he
regarded as an exaggeratcd view of virginity, Jerome composed a ~harp
polemic in which. as the standard English manual on early Christian
literature has put it, "the exegesIs propmcd for 1 Cor 7 along with the
picturesque expressions drawn from pagan antifemllll~t literature pro-
,'oked resentmcnt."ll His treatise Agaill.'it Hdl·!d!us. written in 383. was a
defense of the perpetual vlrginit)' of Mary, "to show that the mother of
the S()n rorGod], who was a mother before she was a bride, continued a
Virgin after her son was born."H He took advantage of his formidable
rhetorical skill~ as a cOlllro\'erslalist and his oumanding skills as a biblic.al
scholar to prove that the re!"erent.:cs in the New Testament to Jesus as
Mar}"s 6m-born son did not nece~saril}' mean that there were an}' sons of
Mar}' after him, because "every only-begotten son is a first-born son, bllt
nOt every fir~t · born is an only-begouen."2S He also devoted lengthy and
careful argumentation 10 the problem arising from the references In the
Gospels Lhat spoke of the "brethren" of Jesus. 2 6 To resolve the problem.
Jerome maintained "that the sons ()f Mary. the sister of our Lord's mother,
who though not formerly believers afterwards did believe. can be called
brethren of the Lord. "H Jerome's defense of the perpetual virginity of
Mary set down the standard arguments, whIch went on being used by
subsequent expo~itors of thi~ doctrine, even including Martin LUlher. But
after completing the pornon of his trealise devoted to Mary. Jerome
ilppendcd a discussion of the relatIve merits of virginity and matrimony.
an issue that had been part of the treatise of Helvidius to wh ich Jerome
was writing an amwer. "Are virgins better than Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. who were married men]" Hc\vidius had argued. "Are not infants
daily fashioned by the hands of God in the wombs of their mothers?"
which seemed to He1vidius to imply necessarily that matrimony was at
lea~t as holy a~ virginity.1B

Jerome's reply was to present himself as continuing the argumenta-

tion of the apostle Paul: "It is good for a man not to lauch a woman.
Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and
let every woman have her own husband. So then he Ihat giveth [a virgin]
in matrimony doeth well: bUl he that giveth her not in matrimony doelh
hetter. "79 This did nOt say that matrimony was evil: it was good, but the
 'AaACO~ OffHASTln 119

preservation of virginity was even hetter. On the basis of this New Testa-
ment authority Jerome felt qualified to say: "I beseech my readers not to
~uppose that in praising virginity 1 have in the least disparaged matri-
mony, dnd separated the saints of the Old Testament from those of the
New, that is lO say. those who had .....ives and those who allOgether
reframed from Ihe embuces ofwomen."lo Nevertheless. Jerome did in
facI go on to disparage matrimony-and women in general- as ill the
following vivid description, for which he ~ummoned d rhelorical skill
that had been honed on the writing~ of Cicero:

The virgin's aim is to appear less comely; she will wrong her-
self so as to hide her natural attractions. The married woman
has the paint laid on before her mirror, and. to Ihe insult of
her Maker, strives to acquire something more than her natural
beauty. Then comes the prattling of infants, the noiSY house-
hold, children watching for her word and waiting for her kiss,
the reckoning up of expenses, the preparation to meet the
outlay. ... Meanwhile a mess.age is delivered that the husband
and his friends have. arrived. The wife. like a swallow, fii es all
over the house. She has to see to everything. "Is the sofa
smooth? Is the pavement swept? Arc the flowers in the cups? Is
the dinner ready?" Tell me, pray, where amid all this is there
room fo r the thoughl of God? Are these happy homes?3 1

And in a sense, the best argument he could summon against the clear
impression that su<;h a description conveyed was to protest: "We do not
condemn matrimony, for virginity itself is the fruit of matrimony. "31
Missing in Jerome's presentalions were, first, a more detailed consid-
eration of Mary not only as Virgin but at the same time as Mother, and,
second. a clearer statement of the sacramental definition of matrimony.
The first of these was supplied by another of Augustine's associates, the
man who brought him 10 the Christian gospel. Ambrose of Milan, who
was, more than Augustine, a genume Doclor MortollU5, at least parliy be-
cause of his strong dependence on the Greek Christian tradition.
Ambrose led the way in positing a "causal connection between the
\irgina\ conceptIon ~nd the ~inles~ne~s of Christ. '. the combination of
the id(;~~ of the prop~gatlon of original ~in through sexual union and of
the ~inle~~ncs~ of Chri,t a~ a consequence ()f his vi rginal conception": I I
this would eventually force the Western Church to define the doctrine of
the immaculate conception of Mary.H No less than Jerome, Ambrose
insisted on the perpetual virginity of Mary, who, he said, "did not seek
the consolallon of being able 10 bear another ~on.·' H He also followed the
words of Paulruq quoted in recognizing that virginity was on a higher
plane than malrimony. ~trongly reJecting dtose who claimed "that there
is no ment in abstinence, no ,grace in a frugal life. none in vIrginity, that
all ~re valued at one price."Jb Like Jerome, Ambro~c devoted ~everal
wrHing, to the theme of virginity, including the treati!.e Concerning Virgins,
As the manual of euly Chr i ~tian literature quoted earlier on Jerome put it
m speaking of Ambrose. "This compo~ition, which is held to be the fi~t
organiC treatise of spirituality and theology on the theme of virginity in
Latin, maintains a balanced and positive judgment on ll1J.lrimony."J1 In
Book II of this treatise. having set forth for his ~i~te r. Marcellina. a descrip-
tion and commendation of the virginal estate, he dre\\ the. connection
with Mary: "Let, then. the hfe of Mary be as. it were IIlrgmit)' itself, set
forth in a likeness. from which, as from a mirror. the appearance of
chastity and the form of virtue is reflected from this you may take )'our
pattern ofhfe, showing, a~ an example. the dear rules of vinue: what you
have to turrect. to effect, and to hold fast." 18
Holding her up as a mooel of the Chmtian life. Ambro~e descrihed
all kinds ofvinues as haVing shone forth in Mary the Virgin. and specifi-
cally six vinues: "The secret of modesty, the banner offaith. the secrel of
de\'otion, the Virgin withlll the house, the companion for the ministry
rof Christ J. the Mother at the temple." jIJ But the second of thesc tWO
triad_~ of virtue. "the Virgin within tile house. the companion for the
r
ministry of Christ], the Mother at the temple," enabled Ambrose to go
beyond the fir!>t triad. "the ~ecrct of mode~ty. the banner of faith. the
secret of devotion." and thus to deepen his portrait 'well beyond Jerome 's_
The first trlad characterized the Virgin in the privacy of her hear! and in
the mystery of he r rciation to God, wherea~ the second moved outward
to her historic mission as the Mother of Christ. For "the Virgin within the
house" was aha "the Mother at the temple," and because she was not
only Virgm but Mother she could be "the companion fo r the ministry of
Christ," This put many of the stories in the Gospels into a new light, hut it
also tended to place even her virginity into the context of her divine
maternity, as W. J. Dooley has made dear.40 "Whatever she did was a
lesson," Ambrose inferred from the Gospel story; for she "attended to
everything as though she were warned by many, and fulfilled every
obl igation of virtue as though she were teaching rather than learning. "41
Therefore Ambrose also emphasized Mary's "abundance of services" and
her being both "busy in private at home" and "accompanied by others
abroad"41-w hich included being "busy" in the very ways that Jerome
cancatured.
The metaphysical dualism mentioned earlier as a frequent coronary
of asceticism in Late Antiquuy did not disappt:ar \vith the coming of
Christianity but took up a place also in Christian thought, above all in the
thought of those many Christian theologians who combined their Chris-
tianity with Neo-Platonism When thai happened, Christian asceticism
expressed Ilself tn a rejection of the body that appeared to deny tbat God
had created it, and therefore in a revulsion at sexuality that equated it with
immorality. Because most writers on the subject were men , and unmar-
ried men at that, the revulsion easily I">ecarne a misogynous con tempt for
women as the devil's snare to corrupt the ri((1 angt.'iica of the ascetic or
celibate rom. A second need, therefore, was the identification of matri-
mony as a sacrament of the church, which was a lengthy and complex
process. Curiously, matr imony was the only one of the eventual list of
seven sacramentS to be identified in the New Testament as a myst,rion or
sacrammlum:o Although these words were not originally used in Greek
and latin in the technical sense of the word sacllIment. they contributed to
the definition of matrimony as a sacrament. 44
The role of the doctrine of Mary in tills development of the doctrine
of matrimony was somewhat obscure, as became eVident, for example,
GlOtlO'S paiming Thr Marriagt of thr Virgin, in the Arena Chapel in Padua,
III

by which John Ruskin was so capllvated.4> Superficially this might he

taken to be juSt another depictiOn of a wedding, with the bnde and
groom dressed in finery and the guests supporting them with love and
prayers. But there was somedung unique about thb wedding and aboul
this couple, specifically about the bride, who, having taken a prior vOw of
cha~tlty, was and yet wa~ not involved in the proceeding~ In viewing this
painting. one cannot but he remmded of the portrayal ofSoint Fronds Sting
M~rried to Pom,y, celebrated also in Canto Xl of Dante's P!lrodiso, in which the
Franciscan renunciation of worldly goods W~~ consecrated in an ~Ilegori­
cal ceremony that was ordinarily the occasion for conferring worldly
goods.~'" Here, 100. the wedding w~s authentic. yet 11 h~d a ~ingular
quallty becau~c of the Bnde.'She was. as the Greek hymn AkothislO$ had
called her, "the unwed Bride [nymphos onymphetos]."
For on aile hand, both theologians and canon lawyers defended the
thesis that the matrimony of Mary and Joseph was a true marriage even
though it was not sexually consummated, on the ba~is of the principle
that "it IS consent, not sexual intercourse, that makes a marriage [consrnsus,
rlOll concubitllS, {(leit cOMublum J." Therefore "a marriage in which bothspou~cs
voluntarily and forsupernamral mOllves follow the precedent ofMary and
Joseph in practicing total abstinence, either from the beginning or only
later" is identified as a ,Iostphstht and has standing as a \'alid union.'ll
But on the othcr hand. It proved to be difficult to deduce, on the baSis of
thc mystical view of Mary as an.:hetypc of the church, and of the church
in turn as the spouse of Christ. dear implications for the sacramental
n~ture of hum an matrimony, which w~s not instituted by Christ during
hi, ministry on earth (not even allhe wedding in Cana ofGalike)48 but
by lhe CrCillor of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the fall into
..,in Nevertheless, as the portr~i! of Mary as lhe Virgin comb~ttcd the
percei ved excesses of sexuality in Late Alltiq\!ity, so the portrait of Mary as
the Mother likeWIse combaHed the perceived excesses of ascetici~m, And
the truth was seen to lie In the paradox.
M,dl .. 1~ngdo BUOIlUtol!. PltlG. H?8 -99/ \ 500 s..mt klcr\ l»..:>ihc~. V.nnn Sm..
(AlmMt / Art RCSOUfC<', '" y.)
9 The Maler Dolorosa
and the Medialrix

Yeo, (I mtlr~ shall piau ("rough thy oon soul also.

-luke 2:35

uring the High Middle Ages of the twelfth and thirteenth centu-
ries, which in iI. special way combined what Ernst Robert Cunius has
c.liled "the essential message of medievill thought." defined by him as
"the spirit ill which it restated tradition," I with what Charles Homer
Haskins has called a genuine "Renaissance of the nvelfth cenmey." 2 that
combination of tradition and innovation was nowhe re morc d ramatically
in evidence than in its portrayal of Mary as the Mater Dolorasa, Mother of
Sorrows, and its correlative doclrine of Mary as the Mediatnx. The sheer
number of references to her in poetry and prose, together with her ever-
deepening prominence in the visual arts, would make it difficult not to
agree with Quo von Simson's judgmelllthat "the age was indeed the age
of the Virgin." 3 In the Czech art of the Gothic period, for example, she
was a dominam figure. of
Iflhe systematic clarification of the title Mediatrix was the principal
objective expression of Mario logy and the chief lheologiul contribution
to the Christian teaching about Mary during this period, this must be
seen also in creiltive tension with the growth of its most important
subjective eXpre\loIOn, the liter<lr}" form and de\"ononalmotlf of the Mater
Doloro!>a: Mary had simultaneousJy lamented the death of Christ beause
he was her Son and welcomed it becau~e he was her Savior and the Savior
of the world. The prophecy of Simeon in the Gospel. that "a ,>word will
pIerce your own soul also ret tuarn ipsillS onimarn ~rtroruitl glodills1," ~ had
long been taken a~ a reference 10 the experience through which Mar},
would ha\"e to palOS a\ \imultaneously the m()<;t important and the most
involved spectator at the crucifixion. as well as a reference to her own
death 6 The desc.;ription accompanying the third word from the cros~.
"Woman, behold thy son!", and "Behold thy mother!"-that "there
stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother"7-il.lthough it came from the
Gospel of John, seemed clearl y to be the fulfillment of Simeon 's wnning
in the Gospel of Luke. The com bina tion of these two picture,,_ the Mother
standing at the foot of the cross and the MOIher with her groaning,
:.orrowing, and gneving soul pierced by a sword, produced the evocative
ver,es of the Staoot Mater Dolorosa:

Stabat mater dolorosa

iuxtil. crucem lacrimosa
dum pcndeb.u filius;
cuitlS animam gememcm
COlltrislantem et dolentem
pertransivit gladi\ls.~

This anon}'mous poem rna)' hil.ve been set to music soon after it was
composed or may even have been writlen to be sung; but il remained an
a({raClive text for composers untd the nineteenth and lwe!meth centu-
ries, drawing the atlention of such widel), different masters as Giovanni
Pierluigi Palestrina, Frani. lmeph Haydn. Giovanni Pergole5i, Franz
Schubert, Giu~eppe Verdi, a.nd Krz)'sLtof Penderecki. 9 The t:Ont rast be-
twee n the renderings of the poem by Gloacchino Ros~ini and h is roungcr
Contcmporuy Anton in Dvorak IS instructive for understanding not only
the differences between these two composers but the ril.nge of subjective
emollon that CQuld be expressed in the Slabal Mater. Dvorak's reading was
meditative, looking inward into the angUished soul of the Virglll anI"!
 ~~lH D OLO~O~ A 127

then imo the anguL~hed soul of the pious behever and pondering the
meaning ohhe awesome event on the cross. Rossini's. by contrast, was
irresistibly operatic. at times almost exuberant. as in his dramatic setting
for solo teno r voice of the words from Simeon's prophecy. "Cujus ani-
mam gememem pCTtransivit gladius." II was a free adaptation in German
of the Latin text of the Stabat Motu when Johmn Wolfgang von Goethe in
his Faust had Gretchen in her hour of crisis pray to the Mater Dolorosa.
"Incli ne thy countenance graciously to my need. thou who art aboWld -
ing in pain. With the sword in thy heart and with a thousand pains thou
dost look up at the de.lth of thy Son. Thou dost look to the Father and send
sighs upward for rthy Son'~J trial md for thine own. "lO UlUS giving
sublime poetic expression to authentic folk piety toward the Virgin
Mary-and. mare important for his eventual poetic purpo~, preparing
the way for the supreme exaltalian o f the Mater Gloriosa. I J Sim ibrly
par.lphrasing the words of the Stabat Mata without quoting them, the
Symphony no. 3 of Henryk Gorecki used an exchange bet,veen Christ
and his Mother to expand the scope of the sorrows o f the Mater Dolorosa
by embracing a1lthe suffering and the faUen of the Second Warld War:

Where has he gone,

My dearest Son?
Perhaps during the uprising
The cruel enemy killed him .
[Kojzt mi 5ie podziol
mOj synocek mily?
fmnie go w powstaniu
zk wrogi urbily J. I Z

But tho~ were relatively restrained versions of the planctus Mariac o r Mor-
ienklagm, the poetry of the complaints of Mary in this and later periods. I J
As those titles for the genre in Latin and German suggest. the Mater
Dolarosa became a weU-known Marian theme particularly in the Western
church. But thanks to recent slUdies by Margaret Alexiou and Gregory W
Dabrov, it is naw possible to draw the lines af development back from
this Western version to the Byzantine poetry of the Lamenting Virgin, and
 balk even frorn thatlO the da~~icalthrenod}' of the lamcnting woman. I ~
Thu~ 11\ the KontakJOO of Rom.lno~ Melodos. Mary complained:

[ am v.lnqui~hl!d h}' loving grief, child, v.mquished

And lannOl tx'ar the thought of being in m) cbamber\ wbile you
arc on lite cross;
I, .n homt' witt Ie rou are in tile 10mb.
leI me come \\ith you~ The sight of you \(x)\hes my pain.

To which Chriq replied:

Lay a,icle rOUT grief. mother, ]a.), it .lside.

Lamentation doe~ not befit ),OU who have been called "B!e\~ed"
0(') not oh~cure your calling with weeping

Do not liken your~dfto those who lack undePitandmg, all-wise

maiden.
You are in the midst of my bridal c\lamber

As Dobrov has pUl it, "Thi~, of t;ourse, alludes to the Virgin's exalted
stalU~ whereby she, as second ill rank only t() the Godhead, absorhs much
ofChn~t's function as interrncdiari' between God and man")S
What the poetry of the Middle Ages in both West ami East was
dt!Scnhing in iLS mo\'ing verses, the visual arts in both West and East also
portrayed, II> II would be po~slble for thIS purpose to examine the mall)'
statues, altarplClCs, and \..'Oodcut~ In which the Virgin WilS belllg pierced
by the ..word. But Michel.lngelo's P,tta was certainly ule best-known
illtempt, in ~tatUilf} or in painting. to capture the dt"pth of the Virgin\
grief.l~ she held the broken body of her crucificd SOll.17 It only added to
the pOignancy tim, u has often been noted, Michelangelo presented
Mar) ilS a ~'oung woman who, lx.'Cause of her unique position as the
Virgin full of gral.:C. had not been ~ubject 10 the rilvages of ilge, jmt as ill
death her hod)' would not be subJcct to the ravages of corruplion. ls On
her facc, for all its youthful beauty. sorrow and serenity are mingled:
these. her mo~t trilgtc hours, in Wllich her SOil hild cried, "My God, my
God, why hast thou for~aken llle?"19 were at the same lilne the hours of
her fulfillment. and of tbe fulfillment of thc words of the Lord lOnCerll·
 MAUl. DOlOROSA 129

ing her in the vision (0 Joseph: "And she shall bring forth ason, and thou
shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins."lo
This theme- that, in the words of one of the most profound of
t\'.'entieth-century Romiln Catholic theologians, Hans Urs von BalthaSilr.
"She suffers along with her Son, and in her spirit, she experiences His
death"Zl-was by no means restricted to art, poetry, and sacred song.
Repeatedly during the Middle Ages, the Mater Dolorosa provided the
content of Marian visions,21 in various periods and in places as widely
separated as Sweden.rnd Spain. Thus in the first book of the Rc'otlations of
Saint Birgiua of Sweden, Jesus said to his mOlher: "You are like the
precious gold that has been beaten on the iron anvil. for you have been
tried with countless tribulations. Through my suffering. you have suf-
fered more than anyone else. "lJ Elsewhere Bi rgilta parilphrased the ac-
count of the crucifixion in the Gospels as Mary might have narrated it (in
the antique language of a non-Latin manuscript of BirgitU 's visions): "],
his moest sorowful moder ... for sorrow y myght unneth stOnde. And
my sonne, seying me and his frenclis weping without comffort from the
jntret of h iS breat ... \oveping and '-Tying o m untO the fader, he said:
'Fader and my Godde. why haest thou for-saken met as yf he had Silid:
'There is none that mlL~t hane mercy on me but thou fader: ... for he
Silid it more mevid out of my compassion than his owne."l~ And at the
oilier end of the north-south ax is of Medieval Europe, Saint Teresa of
AVila, whom Pope Paul VI in 1970 decoTil1ed with the title Doctor of the
Church, described 01 vision in which "the Lore! . . laid Himself in my
arms in the way depicted in the 'Fifth Anguish' of Our Lady.... 'Be not
afraid of this: He saId to me. 'for the union of My Father with thy soul is
incomparably greater than this.''' As the editor of Teresa notes, lhe "Fifth
AngUish (more properly the Sixth) represents Mary with the dead body
of her Son in Her arms."15
The author of the most influential theological treiltise ever written
about Christ as Mediator, Why God Becamt Moo, Anselm of Canterbury at the
end o f the eleventh century, Also wrole a treatise On tht Virgmal ConctpuOIl and
00 Original Sin. as well as fervent prayers addressed to the Virgin as Medi-
atrix.]6 As Anselm himself pointed out, the two treatises were closely
UO ~ UH DOlO a Ou.

connected. because considerati()11 of Christ the Mediator provoked the

question of "how it was that God assumed a man from the smful mass of
the human race without sin." which was alsoa qucsnon about Mary,17 [n
Ch ristian iconography as well as in Christi<ln literature. there was a new
attention to the :'ignificancc ofM,uy: a painting ofildefonsus of Toledo in
the seventh century. who had been celebrated for his devotion to her.
constituted "one of the oldest expressions of the cult of the Virgin. which
was then beginning to pervade Chnstian piety," 18 Mary was alw ::.een a~
the woman who conquered worldly wisdom th rough the miracle of the
vIrgin birth. as well a" the one who conquered the false teachings of the
heretics and resisted the incursions of the barbarians.
Her uniqueness was the subject of titles that were bestowed on her. As
III the EaSt so also in the West. poets and theologiam vied with one
another in elaborating distincth'e appellations for the Virgin, For she was
"the standard-bearer of piety. "19 whose life of prayer the faithfullrnitated
III their own. She was a model to them because she was "cuurageous in
her resolutIon. temperate 111 her silence. pruden! in her questioning <lIId
righteous In her confession. "1 0 As "tbe Queen of Angels. the ruling Lady
of the world. and the Mother of him who purifies the world." she could
acquire such titles as these Mother of Truth; Mother and Daughter of
Humility; Mother of Christians; Mother of Peace; My Most Mercifu 1 Lady.
She was also called. in a term reminiscent of Augustine. the Cit} of God .
The paradox that a creature had be<:ome t.he mother of her Creator
jusofied such names as "the fountain from which the living fountain
flows. the urigin oftbe beginning" Therefore she was "the woman who
uniquely de~erves to he venerated. the on,e to be admired more than all
other women." in fact. "the radiant glory of the world. the purest maid of
earth." Thus she excelled all others. "more beautiful than all of them.
more lovable than all of them. supersplcndid. supergraciolls, super-
glorious," The glory of her name had filled the world
Most of this could have been-and had been~said cemune~ ea.rlier.
What set the devution and thought of this period apart from what pre-
ceded it was the growing emphaSiS on the office of Mary a.s Mediatrix.
The title it~clf seems to have appeared first in Eastern theology. where she
 "A T I ~ D OLO ~ OS ~ 131

was addressed as "the Medlalrix o n aw and of gr,u","e." Whether from such

Eastern source~ or from WeSlern reflection, Ihe tcrm came Into Latin
usage, apparently near the end ofthc eighth centu ry. It was, however, in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries that it achieved Widespread accep-
tance. The title was a means of summarizing w hat had come to be ~en as
her twofold function: she was "the way by which the Savior came" to
humanity in the incarnation and the redemption, and she was also the
one "through whom we ascend to him who descended through her to us
. .. ,through [whom] we have access to the Son ... ,so that throug h
[her] he who through [her] Was given to us mi.ght take us up to himself."
The term Mediatrix referred to both of these aspects of Mary's medi-
atorial position.
In the first instance, it was a way of speaking about her active role in
the incarnation and the redemption. There seemed to be a direct and
irrefutable inference from the universally ae<:epted thesis that "it would
have been impossible for the redemption of the human race to take place
unless the Son of God had been born of a Virgin" to the corollary thesis
that "it was likewise necessary thai the Virgin. of whom the Logos was to
be made flesh, should herself have been born." Thus she had become
"the gate of Paradise, which restored God to the world and opened
heaven to us." By her participation in redemption she had filled heaven
with the saved and had emptied hell of those who would have been
(;ondemned except for her. Her assent to the word and will or God had
made the incunation and therefore the redemption possible. "0 woman
marvelously unique and uniquely m arvelous, " Anselm prayed, "through
whom the elements are renewed, hell is redeemed, the demons are
trampled unde r root, humanity is saved , and angels art' restored!" lbe
reference to Mary's resto ration of the angels wa... an allusion to the idea
that the nmuber of the elect would make up for the number of the an gels
who had fallen; Mary was seen as the one through whom "not only a life
on(;e lost is retu rned to humanity, but also the beatitude of angelic
sublimity is increased," because through her participanon in salvation
the hosts of angels regained their full strength . In the same sense she
wrought reparation for whal Adam and Eve had done, and she brought
 life to all thei r po~tcrilr. Thr oug h her, the n , the rora l prie stho od spok
en
of in the New TeStamelll)1 had tnlly com e Into being in the Chr
istian
chu rch. All of this mad e her "the min iste r and coo pera tor of this disp
en-
sati on, who gave us the salvation of the wor ld,"
Mar r's coo pera tion in the plan of salvatio n help ed to cxplain the
puz zlin g ClrCUlllSlam.e in Ihe Gospel narr atives, that after his resu r rect
ion
Christ hild not app eare d fil'f>t to his mot her: "Wh y sho uld he have
ap-
pear ed to her wllt'.11 she und oub tedl y kne w abo ut tIle resu rrec tion
even
before he suffered and rose?" She was the virgillal hum an bein g of who
m
was born the divi ne h\lm an bein g who was to save the sinful hum
an
being. She was "the sanc tuary of the universal prop iliat ion. the caus
e of
Ihe gen eral reco ncih atio n, the vessel and the tem ple of the life and
the
salviltion of all ," Suc h praises as thes e by Anselm of the Virgin's plac
e in
Ihe hiSt ory of salVd\10n, voiced in the selt lng of prayers, as so muc h
of the
lang uag e abo ut her WilS, cou ld only mea n, in the wor ds of Ber nard
of
ClalTvaux, that "she is our Medialrix, she is the one thro ugh who
m we
ha\'e received thy mercy, 0 God , she is the olle thro ugh who m we,
100,
have wel com ed the Lord Jesus into our hom es." Or, as Tho mas Aqu
in as
put it in the thirtet::nth century, "She was so full of grace that it ove
rflo ws
on \0 all man kind . It is inde ed, a great thin g that an]' one sain t
ha~ so
muc h grac e that il con duc es the salvatio n of many; but mos t won dro
us is
1110 have so muc h as to suffice for the salvation of all
man bnd ; and thus i\
is in Christ and in the Blessed Virgin. Thu s in every dan ger thou ciln
st find
a refu ge in this sam e glor ious Virgin .. , . [Mary says] 'In me is aU
hop e
o f life and of virtu e: "11
This title Mediatrix, however, applied nOl only to Mary's place in the
histo ry of salvation bUI also to her con tinu ing pos itio n as interce~
sor
bcl\ \een Chm t and Illlmanity, as the one who se "vir gmi ty we praise
and
who se hum ility we adm lte; but thy mer cy tilstes even sweeter, and
It is
thy mer cy that we emb race e\'cn mor e fondly, think of even mor e
ofle n,
and ill\'oke even mo re freq uen tly" The rem emb ranc e of Mary's "anc
ient
mer cies " arou sed in a believcr the hop e and con fide nce to "ret urn to
thee
(Ma ry], and thro ugh thee to God the Father and to thy only Son ," so
that
it was poss ihle to "de man d salvation of thee [Ma ry]. " The con sum
ma-
 M AU ~ !lO lO ~O SA 1J3

tion of the believer's glory was the awareness that Mary stood as the
Mediatrix between him and her Son; in fact, God had chosen her for lhe
specific task of pleading the cause of humanity before her Son. And so she
was "the MOlher of the kingdom of heaven, Mary, the Mother of God, my
only refuge in every need." Mary was addressed as the one who could
bring cleansing and healing to the sinner and as the one who would give
succor against the temptations of the devil; but she did this by mediating
between Christ and humanity. "By thy piOUS prayer, make thy Son pro-
pitious to us," one could plead; or again: "Our Lady, Our Mediatrix, Our
Advm:ate, rc(;oncile us to thy Son, commend us to thy Son, represent us to
thy Son . Do this, 0 Blessed One, through the grace that thou hast found
[before God], through the prerogative that thou hast merited, through
the mercy to whkh thou hast given birth."
"As we make a practke of rejoicing in the nativity of Christ," one
preacher exhorted, "so we should rejoice no less at the nativity of the
mother of Christ." For it was a basic rule that "whatever we set forth in
praise of the Mother pertains to the Son, and on the other hand when we
honor the Son we are nOl drawing back from our glory to the MOlher."
Christ was pleased when praise was alTered to the Virgin Mary; con-
versely, an offense against either the Son or the Mother was an offense
against the other as well. It was particularly the intercessory implication
of the title Mediatrix that could be interpreted as taking something away
from Christ, who was "the High Priest so that he might alTer the vows of
the people to God." The countervailing force against what the Protestant
Reformation was to construe as Mariolatry and as a diminution of the
glory of Christ, the sale Mediator,33 was the recognition that she had
been "exalted through thy omnipotent Son, for the sake of thy glorious
Son, by thy blessed Son," as Anselm put it in one of his prayers. It was,
moreover, a COIl.~ensus that Mar r had been saved by Christ, a consensus
that had a decisive effect on the eventual formulation of the Western
doctrine that by her immaculate conception she had been the great
exception to the universality of original sin.H Extravagances of devotion
and rhetoric were curbed by the principle that "the royal Virgin has no
need of any false honor."
 IH " ~H~ IH>LO ~ O H

It was perc eive d as an .-appropriate hon or and.-an auth enti c exp ress ion
of her pOSition in the dl ville ord er whe n Mary was acclaimed as seco
nd in
dign lty only to God himself. who had taken up hab llau on in her_
The
grol lnd of tillS dign ity was the part she had taken in the rede mpt
ion.
mor e imp ona nt than that of an y othe r ordi nary hum an belllg. Thr
oug h
her Sun she had been exalted "above all crea ture s" and was \\-'orthy
of
thei r veneration TIllS app hed to all earthly creatures. bUI it incl ude
d all
othe r creatures as well, so that "the re is noth ing III heaven that is
not
subject to the Virgin thro ugh 11er Son," Echoing the language of the
T(
Dtum abo ut the praise of God. as othe r Marian hymllS wer e to do late
r 111
the Middle Ages. a poe m of Pete r Damian proclaim ed: "Th e bles
sed
cha rm of angels. the ord er of prop hets and apostles affirm thee
to be
exalted ove r them and seco nd only to the Deity." For non e of the
m-
"ne ithe r the cho rus of the patr iarc hs for all thei r ex(.'Cllence. nor
the
com pan y of the prop hets for all thei r powers offo retelling the future.
nor
the senate of the apostles for an thei r ,udl clal authOrity" -de ser ved
to be
com pare d with the Virgin Because she was the one who held first
place
amo ng the enti re celestial host, whe ther hum an or angelic, she. nex
t to
God himself, sho uld receive the praises of the who le world. TIlere was
, ill
shor t, "no thin g equal to Mary and noth ing but God greater than Mar
y."
As the greatne~s of God cou ld he defi ned 111 the famous form ula
of
Anselm'~ onto logi cal argu men t for the existence of
God as "tha t than
whi ch noth ing greater can be thou ght, " so the puri ty of the Virgin cou
ld
be defined, again by Anselm. as "tim than w hich, und er God, nmh
ing
grea ter can be thou ght. " Am ong an that co uld be called holy, save
God,
Mary pos.~cssed a holiness that was unique.
The refo re it was also fittlng thaI veneration and prayer sho uld be
addressed to her Alth oug h ther e had long bee n such wor ship of
the
Virgin, as we have seen in previous chap ters , vari o us leaders of
the
chu rch dur ing lhese centune~ systemallcally enc oura ged and nou rish
ed
her cult. In a revealing auto biog raph ical mem oir, one Benedictine abb
ot,
GUi bert of Nog em, desc ribe d how. whe n his mot her was in great pain
at
his birt h, "thi s vow was mad e . that if a mal e child sho uld be bor
n, he
wou ld be gi\"en ove r to the service of God and , offered to her who i.~
Queen of all next to God." Another Benedicune abbot. Bernard of Rei-
chenau, made it a pranice to refer to himself as "the slave of the Mother
of God." And yet another Benedictine abbot, Anscim, who went on to
become archbishop of Canterbury, commonly addressed prayers simul-
taneously to "my good Lord and my good Lady," saying to tbem: "1
appeal to you both, devoted Son and devoted Mother." What has been
cOilied "the glowing reverence for Mny" in Bernard of Reichenau WOlS

duracteristic of the age. Prayers to Mary were cited as suppOrt for admo-
nitions OInd arguments on behalf of her cult. and it was urged that such
prayers would gain the succor of "the Mother of the Judge in the day of
need." The very day of the Sabbath was said to have been dedicated to
Mary. and those who appealed to her as "the Gate of Heaven, the Window
of Paradise" when they were plagued by the gUilt of their sins received
full absolution.
It was no exaggeration of the importance of Mary in the devotion and
worship of the church when the festival of her nativity, said to have been
announced to her mother by an angel juS! as the nath'ity of Christ from
her was to be announced to her (although the New Testament w~ silent
about the firsl of these annunciations), was celebrated and asserted to be
"the beginning of all the festivals of the New Testament ... ,the origin of
all the other festivals." As WolS inevitable with any saint, and a fortiorI
with her. it became a standard expression of piety to attribute to Mary the
performance of various m iracles. A few of these may have taken place
during her earthly life. but others were continuing to take place long
afterward. up (0 the very present; moreover. the nwnber of such miracles
ascribed to Mary would increase after the Middle Ages. reaching some-
thing of an apex in thc nineteenth and twentieth centuries,35 A special
form of the devotion to her miracles was the cultivation of her relics. In
her case this was made much more complicated than in that of any other
.~aint by the widely held belief that no parts of her body had remained on
earth, because at her death she had been assumed bodily into heaven, a
belief that WAS finally promulgated olS a dogma by Pope Pius XII in
1950. 36 At Chartres, for example. according to one writer, "the name
and the relics of the Mother of God are venerated through almost all the
Lllin world"; he \\'a\ referring a.bove all to her "sacred tunic." Yet when a
paTti! ula.r chur<.h claimed to possess _~uch relics, the same writer re-
spondl'd that if "sh!', through the same Spirit by whom she conceived,
knew that he to whom she ga\'e birth by faith was to fill the entire world,"
she \....ould not ha~e kept su(h mementos of his childhood as hi~ baby
teeth or her own mother's milk A more appropriate way of celebrating
her memorr was the commemorauon of her natwily or the recitation of
the All Mafia, whose cullic rCp<'mion bc<:ame Characleri!.{i(; of piet}' dur-
ing thi ... period and wiJo<;c expo.~iuon eventually provided a basis for the
.Htkulation of her .. petial place III the history of salvation. Clearly there
wa ... a dose correlation het\\'een the suhjL'Ctivit}' of the devotion to Mary
as the Mater Dolorosa and the objCCtivit}' of the dextrine of Mary as the
Mrdiatrix. It was !lOlthe correlation of paradox, as was the celebration of
her under the rubrics of the Paragon of ChHtity and the Ble<;scd
Mother,l7 but the correlation of complementarity, aL least until, in the
modern era, the denial of her objective transcendence by many would
deprive her of the title of Mediatrix even though the simultaneous rise of
sublc<.:tivlsrn would continue to find syrnbolic, if sometimes sentimental,
expres~ion ill the Ma!er Dolorosa
QulnlCll M~S$)'~, Thr Virgin and rhM Enlbronrd, .-un FOOr All¢<, c. 1490-95. N~llono\l Gilby,
T.ondon.
 10 The Face That Most Resembles Christ's

Bthold thy ffiOthfr!

-John 19:27

ne of the most sublime moments in the history of devotion to

Mary came in the closing cantos of Dante's DiYi~Comoiy, in which Bernard
of Oairvaux gives praise to the Blessed Virgin Mary.! These praises were
in grea t meilsure derived from Bernard's many writings ",bom Mary. ~ For,
il S StevenBonuill has ~i d. Bernard was "helped by lhe fact that his thinking
is not o n the cutring edge of academic !.heology: his \\'Titings about Mary
are filled with an intense and intensely personal devotion to the Virgin ,
and aim as much to sli r his audience's hearts as to p rovoke activity in their
mmds.") As Bernard Instructed Dante, pointing 10 a fami ly resemblance
that has been caught. for example, by the Ao(\vcrp painter Massys (d.
1530);

Look now upon the face that is most like

the face of Ch rist. for only through its brightness
can you prepare you r vision to see H im.~

The privilege of beholding Mary. which had been granted in special

measure to Bernard and which then Dante proceeded to sha re with

'"
 rHi

Bernard, was a tral1~forming vl~ion and qUlle literally all indescrihahle

one. Yel this vision prepared for an infinitely grander Oil(' and pointed
beyond IIsclf to the vj:.ion of Christ a:. "the exalted Son of God and of
Mary."~ and 10 the beatific vision of God. This "camo of apolheosis."~
beginning wilh the paradox, "Virgin mother, daughter of your
Son./ more humble and sublime than any creature. "7 stood loS a summa
tion and as a goal of the eJlIlre Di\lnt Comedy-and of lhe entire history
de~cribcdin the preceding chapters of this hook-a..~ welJ as an anticipa-
tion of much of the history Ihat was 10 follow. For il wa, Milry, as the
"Gentle Lad}" in heilven. bywhose intercession the "stern Judgment up
abo\"(.. I~ shaneroo," who, near the beginning of the p<>cm, commillldcd
Beatrice 10 go to the a~sistilnce of the poet. "who loves you so I that-for
your sloke-he's left the vulgiIT crowd." thus setting the whole itinerary
of DlolW.' the pilgrim in motion. BAnd ,u the conclusion of the poem.
Mary was to Dante not only "Our Lady [noma donna],,9 hilt "Our Queen
[nama regina J," I 0 "lite Queen of Heaven, "I I and "the Empress [Agusla J." 12
the fulfillment of the promise of Paradise and the archelype of all who
were saved. For "by virtue of being closer to the human plilne. she is
more approachable by those who have reason 10 fear, or who cannot
comprehend, the ineffable m}"~tery of God or the stern authority of
Christ." I J
It would be easy for the reader to he caught up by the rhapsodic,
almost dilhyrambic ecsta~y of Bernard's poem and by the vision of a
transcendent Virgin Mary that it celebrated, and in the process to forget
that for Dante and for Bernard of Clilirvaux, as for the entire Medieval
tradition, Mary slood in continuity with the human race, the same hu-
man race to which the poet and his readers belonged. Therefore the glory
with whtch she wa.~ crowned was a special form-dlfTerent in degree,
but finally not different in kind-of the glory in which all the saved
partiCipated, a glory that wa~ communicated to her, a~ to them. by the
grace and merit of Christ. She was, in the parado)( of the incarniltion, the
Daughter of her Son, who had redeemed her, an empha..~is that was,
already among the Franciscans of Dante 's lime, an important component
of the developing doctrine of the immaculate conception. 14 Earl y in the
 TH[ H C !: TH~T MOST UH"'BL. H CIl~ U T'S 141

Porodiw, in response to Dante's unspoken question about the relative de-

grees of merit and hence of salvation, Beatrice had to explain:

Neither the Seraph closest untO God,

nor Moses, Samuel, nor either 10hn-
whichever one you will-not Mary has,
I say, their place in any other heaven
than that which houses those souls you JUSt saw,
nor will their blessedness laSt my longer. l S

Degrees of salvation there were. and therefore circles of Paradise, "in

ways diverse" and "fro m ~tage to stage," as Beatrice had explained even
earlier; l6 and Mary occupied the highest of these. Withoul such degrees
of salvation there would nOl be perfect justice on the basis of merit,
which varied from one to another and which therefore had to be re-
warded by differing degrees of glory; and, for thaI matter. without these
degrees of salvation and of damnation there would have been nu Divine
Comtdy. The jusuceofGod was a mystery that remained "past understand-
109, "17 also when it brought about ,he damnation of pagans who had
never h ad me opportunity to hear the gospel. Nevertheless, those who
were destined to dwell eternally in the lower degrees of Paradise affirmed
that " in His will is our peace"; for "every place / in heaven is in Paradise.
though grace/does not rain equally from the High Good,"l8 because
these were aU degrees of the same heaven and of the one Paradise, as Mary
was the culminAting point of the one humanity, still in the one heaven.
As the culmin ating point, Mary was the new "Mother of all living, ..
as Eve had been, according 10 the Blble, "mother of ill living." II> Mary
therefore stood in a typological relation to Eve. 20 TIlis relation of Eve and
Mary, which I described in chapter 3 on the basis of [renaeus of Lyons,
was, significantly, the theme with which Bernard began hi~ discourse
about the Virgin Mary ill (he canto preceding his apostrophe to her:

The wound that Mary closed and then

anoimed w.J.s the wound that Eve-so lovely
at Mary's fcet~had opened and h.J.d pierced. ll
And now. in Bernard's cxplanatlon and DanH:\ vhion. Mother Eve was
"l'ated at the feet of \Iather MarY-:lIld in a higher plilce than RilChel or
e\'cn Bl'atncC,ll None ofthi .. would have comported with the ,cheme of
salvation a~ Dante was expounding it unl~~ Mary as the Second Eve had
been gcnlllllely and completely a memher of the human race. When
Ca<.:ciaguida in Parael I~C spoke of how b is mo ther invok('d Mary" ill pain~
of birth"; H or ,,,hen BU()(Ollle ~till in Purgatory described h,wing lapsed
1I1to a coma aft('f being wounded III battle. JUS! a~ he "had finislwd
littering the name or Mary rlK'l nome di Muria finlJ";l" or when Piccarda
Donati. after rcroullIing her quite remarkable life story,

began to sing "AI'l

Munu" and. whIle singillg. vanished as
a weighty thing will vanish in deep water- IS

the onc whom allthrce were imoking in cxtremi<, was olle who. tllough
their Mediatrix. was also tlleir fellow human being. who in ract could not
have been truly their Mediatnx Wlless she had been thcn fello\\ human
hcmg.
She wa~ at the same time the per\onal embodiment of the supremc
,iuue. or which humanity Wa'> made capilble through the gift of grilce: in
her. ilS Bernard said. "is cvery goodness found in any creilture,"2" Yet in
this connection there WilS a curious clfcum.<.tance in the Dhine Comedy. and
one whose explanation is by no means obvious: much of the mostcxphcit
consideration of the specific virtucs of Mu)' appeared in the Purgutorio
rather than in the Porodiso. The hymn of Bernard In the Porodiso did laud her
as "the noonday torch or charity" ror those already in heilvcn and as "a
living sprmg ofhopc" for those ~till on euth 11 Therefore she not only
manifCl>ted great faLth. which was unplicit throughout. lll but '>he wa,>
likewise the exemplJr ofbuth hope and charity In ... hort. she embodied all
three virtue.<. celebrated in 1 Corinthians 13: "fauh. hope. charit)'. these
three" I ,! It was on these three \'lTIue~ that. in Cantos XXIV- XXVI. Dante
was examined by the thrce apmtks. or "doves." 30 Peter. James. and John .
a tno \\ ho had alreadr bel'n anticipated in the closing cantos or the PurgatO-
rio 3l and who fOfllll'd the i nller circle of the twelve apmtles. 32 Yet the vir-
 THE HC! THAT IoIOST atHMILH CHMIST'S 141

tues that stood OUl were the ones for which Mary was being singled OUlIil
the Purgatorio, rather than those that were identified with her in the Parodiso.
Perhaps part o f the re;awn was thai the souls in Paradise were already en-
joying the fruits of virtue, which they sha red (though in lesser measure)
with Mary, whereas those in Purgatory, who still had to altain to Paradise.
stood in need ohhe grace that was merited and communic;ated through
the virtues of Mary, which therefore needed a more complete description,
The attack on "arrogant Christians" in Canto X of the Puryalorio thus
ha.d as its foil the humility of the Virgin Mary, who at the annuncialJon
had called herself "the handmaid of Gad. "33 Similarly, when the pilgrim
came to the place where "the sin of envy / is scourged within this circle,"
wha.t he heard arising from mose who were being cleansed of such envy
was "the cry of, 'Mary pray for us: "34 Further on, as he saw "people
whom the fire of wrath/had kindled ," they were contrasted with "the
gentle manner" of the Virgin's reproof to her twelve-year-old son when
she found him in the temple at Jerusalem: "Son, why hast thou Ihus dealt
with us? behold. thy father and I have sought thee sorrowmg. "H The
terrace of those who had been gu i.lfy of "sloth and negligence" was one
where it was no longer Mary's "gentle manner" bUl her "haste" and her
zeal that were being celebrated. 36 The sin of avarice, whose "hWlgering
is deep and never-ending," c;aused its victims here in Purgatory (0 lament
"Sweet Mary [ThlJce Maria]!" 3'! Those ··whose appetite was gluttonous"
Mood in the sh.upest possible Contrast With Mary, who while on earth had
not concerned herself with satisfying her OVvTl hu nger. H And those who
were in Purgatory to burn away Ihe fire s o (Just had to cry aloud the words
of the Virgin Mary in her chastity. 39 The tour through Purgatory thereby
bec;ame al the same lime a c;atalog o f the virtues of the Bles.~ed Vi.rgin.
For Dante·s view of the emp irical church and it~ need for reform, the
deb.lte.~ of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries over poverty and prop-
erty carried great importance. The discourse o f Thomas Aquinas about
Francis of Assisi in Can to XI of the Paradiso described the spiritual marriage
betv..-een Fr;ancis and Lady Poverty, who had been ·'deprived of her first
husbmd." Christ, and who had thereafter remained without a suitor for
"cleven hundred years and more," until the coming ofFrancis,~o But one
 of the (Iue~uon~ being debated In the Franciscan controvcr.,ies over pov-
crty dunng Damc\ ume was whclher, like Christ, Mary, too. had taken a
vow of ab!,olute poverty and, if she Iud, wllat she had done, for example.
with all th,\! gold, frankmcense. and myrrh lhat the Wise Men from the
Fast had brought to her and to her Child.ofl Dantc's answer to the qu~tioll
of the PO\crty of Mar}' ~eemcd unequi\·oca.l· "S\\CCt Marr'" Dame heard
a "oice sa) in Purgatory.

In th,lt hCNel wherc

you had ~et d(lwn your holy burden, there
one can discover JUSt how poor you werc. H

The chastity of the Virglll Mar}', who was. as Bernard said in the IWO
openmg word, of hh song. unique among women in being ~imul.
taneously Virgin and Mother,il was contrasted in the PUrg<llorio not only
wilh "the fOrLC of Venus' poi~on," the extramarital unchastity of Olilcrs.
but evcn with the marital chastity of virtuous wedlock: "Virum non
cognosco, I know not a man," as Mary had said, in Latin. to the angel of
the annunciation."" And when Dante confronted in Pu rgator y those souls
who had been gUilty of the sins of glUltony and drunkenness in this life,
he was reminded once 1I10re of the contrast with the virtue of Mar)'.
manifc~ted at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, and of her role as
Mcdiatrix both 011 Cana and now in Purgatorr A~ a voice explalllcd.

Mary's care was for the marriage-

feast'~ being ~eml)' and complete. nO! for
her mouth (Whlth now would imcrcede for yoU).H

continuing III heaven the interCC$sion that she had articulated while on
earth.
It was likewise the PurgatorJo tlw Dame the poet first described the
III

relation Mary bore to the angels, The two guardian angels dressed III
green whom Dante the pilgnm ~aw, with their flam ing swords shortened
bUI their faces blinding for sheer brilliance. "both come from Mary's
bosom." Sordello told him, "to serve as th e custodiam of the val-
ley/ aga.in~1 the <;erpclU that will soon appear. "<!-(, The other reference ill
 THl fAC~ lH~l \oIOST RlH"'lH CI"AIH·~ 145

the PUrgcl[orio to Mary's relation with the angels appeared twO tantos later.
The pilgrim was contemplating an amal'ingly beautiful wall of white
marble, adorned with carvings that put to shame not only the greatest of
human sculptors but nature itself.'l7 Carved on the marble wall was the
figure of the angel Gabriel:

The angel who reached earth with the decree

of that peate which, for many years, had been
invoked with tears, the peace that opened heaven
after long interdict, appeared before us,
his gracious action carved with such precision-
he did nO{ seem to be a silent image.
One would have sworn that he was saying, "Ave";
for in that scene there was the effigy
of one who turned the key that had unlocked
the highest love; and in her stance there were
impressed these words, "Eat andlJa Dfi,"
preCisely like a figure stamped in wax.+ 8

Already in Purgatory, therefore, the divinely decreed mission of the Vir·

gin Mary to "turn the key" and become lhe human means for the incar'
nation and thereby for salvation was being announced to the souls that
awaited release into Paradise; and already in Purgatory the angels were
making it evident that they stood ready to serve her, and through her both
her divine Son and the humanity he came to save.
Yet it was in Paradise that the special relation between Mary and the
angels was disclosed in all its glory. Once again. the angel Gabriel.

the angelic love who had descended

earlier, now spread his wings before her,
singmg "AI"( Maria. gllltia plma.""9

But this time it was not, as it had been 111 Purgatory, in a mere physical
repre!>emation on cold marble. which was beauliful but was not living,
but in the spiritual reality of heaven itself that Gabriel conti nued forever
Lhe salutation with which the history o f salvation had begul1 50 -not any
1~6 THlFAO HAl" O U . " U l t l l l - H . I U 'S

longer In the "modest voice" of his origilial greeting but in full-throated

praise. 0; 1 It was from this event of the annunciation, rather thiln from the
nativity ofChustllself. that Dame, who follm..'ed the Florentine custom,
da ted the beginning of the new era through the incarnation, so that the
new year began on 25 March.n Gabriel was joined III his salutation and
praise by all the angelil: hosts of heaven. Dante the pilgrim saw and heard
the hea\'enly "brightnesses" as they expres.<;ed "the deep affection each
possessed for Mary" and as they sang the RtgJna C!Xli so ~weetly, Dante the
poet added. "that my delighltn that has never left me" even now a~ he
wrote. 5l It was a song in praise of Mary in which the angels were JOined
by the church triumphant of the saved who had already come to Para-
dise,"~ As "the greatest Rame," ss Mary, Lady of Heaven, was the object of

this angelic paean:

I am angelic 10\'e who whee.! around

that high gladness inspired by the womb
that was the dwelling place of our Desire;
so shall I circle, Lady of Hea\'en, until
you, fo!lowmg your Son, have made that sphere
supreme, still more divine by entering Il.s~

This "ineffable vision,"57 which attributed to Mary the ability to make

the glOries of the supreme sphere of heaven "still more dtvine" through
her presence, prepared Dante for the sublimely ineffable vbion of Mary
and the ilngels thai wold come to him as the occasion for Bernard's
dislourse about the Blessed Virgin
It \ViiS that vision thaI was described in the conduding IcrCet~ of
(ilIlIO XXX! of the P~r~d!so. As his ilwe hild deepened, the pilgrim had been
reluctant to contemplilte the full power and glory before him. Therefore,
"son of grilce" lhilt he was, he had nevertheless LO be admonished:

You will not come to know this joyous state

if your eyt:S only look down ilt the base;
but look upon the cirdes, look al those
dlat sit in a pOSition more remote,
 T K~ fACE THAT NO~T ~ESlIoUlH C H~U T' , 147

until you see upon her seat the Queen

to whom this realm is subject and devoted. S8

The souls of the ~nts who had already come to heaven, including in
particular "the Hebrew women." 59 were part of the celestial re ..lm, .. nd
M4ry was their archetype. But the angels, those drea.d and powerful
spirits who did God's bidding day and night, had been its citizens all
along, and there they had remained even after their rebellious fellow
angels had been cast into the Inferno, where, as the pilgrim learned, the
demons had now become as foul as they once had been fair.60 And since
Mary was indeed the Queen of Heaven, she was Queen of Angels. too.
Lifting his eyes in response to the admonition. the "son of grace," in
language reminiscent of the apocalyptic visions of Ezekiel. Daniel, and
Saint John the Divine,

... as, at morning,

the eastern side of the horizon shows
mOTe splendor than the side where the sun sets,
so, as if climbing with my eyes from valley
to summit, r saw one part of the farthest
rank of the Rose more bnght than all the rest. 61

Before the transcendent light of the glorified Queen of Heaven, the angels
gathered-not an indiscriminate mob, but as dis tinct individuals, since,
as Thomas Aquinas taught, "it is impoSSible fo r t"''' angels to be of one
species," but each had to be a species unto itself. 62 The poet described
what he saw:

r saw, around that midpoim, festive angels-

more than a thousand-mth their "'lings outspread;
each was distinct in splendor and in skill.63

The "midpoint" and the object of their sportive celebration was the
ineffable bea.uty ofMuy, who ruled over a realm in which both saints and
angels had thelT place. That speCial place of Mary among the saints in
heaven hecOlme the theme for the altarpiece that Giovanni Bellini was to
ere.ue for the church of San Giobbe in Venice, Madonna EmhrOlll'd \\i!h !he
Saints, sometime in the 1480~,64 Bellini, like Dame, wa~ a devotee of
Franci~ of Assisi, who was rerre~ented on the altarpiece,65 In his por-
trayal of the Virgin, Bellini put into living color the very qualities of Mary
that D<tme d~cribed :

And there J saw a loveliness that when

it ~miled at the angelic songs and garne~
made glad the ey~ of all the other saints,

Here it be<;arne the task of poetic

,
language about namcendem reality not
to describe the object but to describe its own incapacity to descfibe the
object:

And e"en if my speech wefe rich as my

imagination is, I !>hould nO! try
to tell the very least of her delights,66

That sentence needs to be parstd with some care. As hls treatises on

literature and language attested, Dante was honest enough to know that
he had a skill with word~, and it would have been the most hypocritical
kind of false modest}' for him to pretend otherwise. MorcOI't'r, here he
recognized in himself a "wealth ofimaginati ve power," and he found that
it in turn far exceeded all of this verbal power, Yet even ifll had not, he
wa~ saying, if word could truly h<tve been matched to im<tgination in
~ome simple one-to-one correlation, that would have been inadequate
for describing Mary-indeed, inadequate for descrihlng not her regal
and transcendent position in the co:;mm but "the very lea~t of her de-
lights."
h would be easy to read all of this eXITavagam language aix>\lt the
Virgin Mary as what Protestant polemiCS agaimt MedIeval C~lholicisrn
came to call "Marioialry." 6;o [I would be ea~y, but it would be superficial
and mistaken, For, as Henry Osborn Taylor put it, "One may say that the
Commotio begins and ends with the Virgm. It was ~he who SCnt Beatrice
into the gate~ of Hell to rno\'e Virgil-meaning hUlTlan reason-to go to
Dame's aid. The prayer which obtains her bcncdiClion, and the vision
 TIlL .~(t lHAT ... o n RnUUlIS (H RIST·S 149

following. dose the Pamdiso." But, he wuned, "no more with Dante rn4Il
with other mediaeval men is she the end of worship and devotion. Her
eyes are turned to God. So are those of Beatrice, of Rachel, and of all the
saints in Paradise. "68 Mill)' could nOt have been the archetype ohhe saved
unless she herself had been saved. She had been saved in a special manner,
as by now almost all the theologi;ms of the church affirmed, although it
did not become official and binding until 1854-that is, by being pre-
served from original sin rather than, as everyone else was, rescued from
it-but saved by the ~ame divine grace and through the same divine
Redeemer as the rest of humanity. 69 Dante's attitude toward this explana-
tion of Mary's holiness was not altogether clear, but in Canto XIII he had
Thomas Aquinas declare,

J do approve of the opinion

you hold, that human nature never was
nor shall be what it was in tho~e [\"'0 persons,

namely, in Adam;md in Chris(.lo This does seem to justify the conclusion

drawn by Alexandre Masseron: "Dante affirms thaL Christ and Adam are
the only ones who were crealed perfecl," the explicit position of Bernard
of Clairvaux, who rejected the dontine of the immaculate conception. 71
Such was as well the leaching ofSamt Thomas Aquinas. 72 That in turn
makes it necessary to consider the qllestion of the relation of Mary to
Christ in Dante's theology.7 3
Whatever may have been Dante's doctrine about the special privilege
of the immaculate conception at the beginning of the life of the Blessed
Virgin, he clearly did teach, as did Bernard, that aL the end of her life Mary
was granted the privilege of the assumption, through the grace of
Christ.7'i Therefore Saint John explained very carefully concerning him-
self that (pace some legends about him) he had not received this p rivilege
of being assumed into heaven:

Oil earth my body now is earth and shall

be there together with the rest until
our numher equals the eternal purpose.
But then John added the significalll ~tipulatlon. speaking of Mary ilnd of
Chnst: "Only those twO lights that ascended we,l.r / their double garment
In thb blessed doister:' 7s the "double garment" being the body and the

soul, not only tlte soul. The two were Quist, through the ascension
narrated in the New Testament and confessed in the creed. and then Mary
through the ilSsumpuon celebrated throughout the lirurgy of the Medi-
eval cimrch but not offidally promulgated as a dogma of the church until
1950. When Dante, bIdden by Beatrice, lifted his eyes to behold Mary in
heaven as "the Rose H1 whkh the Word of God became/Acsh,"76 he
celebrated ule ascension of C;hrist as an event intended "to grant scope to
the eyes there that hild not strength for Thee," and immediately went on
[0 recognize that through her bod ily ilssumption inlO heil\'en Mary
shAred in thai exaltation. becoming not only "the fair flower which I
always invoke morning and evening" on earth but "the greatest of the
fires" in the Empyrean.?? Therefore 11 was 10 Mary assumed into heaven
thilt Bernard addressed his petition on Dante's behalf. to "curb his mortal
passions" and to "disperse all the clouds of his mortality," SO that Dante
might recei\'e the vision of the "Eternal light" and so "that the Highest
Joy might be his to see."78
Seeing that "Eternal Light" was the content of the vision of God. And
in the final hundred lines of the final canto of the Porodiw, Dante celebrated
the vision of the Trinity of three di\'ine Persons in one divine Substance:

In the deep and bright

essence of that exalted Light, three circles
appeared to me; they had three different colors,
bUl all of them were of the same dimension;
one circle seemed reflected by the second,
as rainbow is by rainbow. and the third
seemed fire breilthed equally by those two circles. 19

TIlcrcforc it must not be forgotten that a canto opening with the celebra-
tion of the Virgin Mar)' by Bernard ofClalrvaux went on-through her
and not around her. but nevertheless beyond her-to the celebration of
the Eternal Light and Eternal "Love thilt moves the sun ilnd the other
stars, "SO including Mary as the sun from which "the morning star draws
beamy"SJ and Mary as StdJa Maris, the Stu of the Sea and the Queen of
lIeaven. 82 Hence there was not, in those final hundred lines, a single
explicit reference to her; or perhaps it was all a reference to her, as the
fellow creature (as Bernard explicitly described her)93 who had p i-
oneered in this viSion. And that would have been in keeping with her role
throughout the poem, as the heavenJy Muse whose intervention, as it had
been described by Beatrice already III Canto II of the Inferno,8+ had made it
all possible. Thus "Maria" was for Dante "the name of that fair Aower
which I always/invoke, at morning and at evening";8S singing the Salve
Regjoo to her already while traveling through Purgatory,86 but becoming
her most eloquent troubadour in the Paradiso and above all in its final
cantos.
Luu, Vln leplcrl. Tilt VI~ln with Two AnIl'Is. 1523 Y~le Un",ersity An G.Il~ry, St~phln
Cuhon (]or~. SA 1903, Fund
11 The Model of Faith
in the Word of God

And Mary said,

Be it unto me acmrding to thy word.
-Luke U8

hen a great faith disappears, Gilbert Chesterton once observed,

its sublime aspects go first: the Puritans rejt:cted the worship of the
Virgin Mary but went on burning witches. j Like so many ofChc~ terton's

aphorisms, this one managed to be both true and fabe, as a doser ex-
amination of the attitude (or, rather, the several attitudes) of the six-
teenth-century Reformation toward Mary would reveal. For the Protes-
tant Reformers contended that just as their critique of what they regarded
as Medieval sacramental magic had raised and restored the Lord's Supper
to ils divinely instituted place, so taking from Mary the false honors with
which she had been burdened in the Middle Ages was in fact a liocration
of her to be a supreme model of faith in the word ofGod. 2 And Mary as
model of faith has also been an integul element of the Mariology of
WeSlern Calholicism; for "faith as lived by Mary is total. trusting self-
surrender of mind and body to God." j The most obvious characterbtic of
the picture o f Mary in the Protestant Refo rmation was its critique and
rejection of what it took to be the excesses of Medieval devotion and
teaching. Taking up the fam iliar Latin translation of Genesis 3: 15, "She

'"
IH ,, 0 0 ; 'I F HilI!

Llp>uJ will cru,h hi~ head, "4 in his Leclures on Genesis. which occupied him
during the final ten years of hi~ life, Luther found It"amazlIlg" and
"damnable" that "Satan has managed to appl)' thiS pa~\age, which in

fllUesl measurc abound~ In the comfort of the Son of God, to the Virgin
Marr- For in all the Latin Bibles the pronoun appears ill the feminine
gender: 'And 51lt will crush:" 5 At ItS mosl radical. particularly III S\\ Ilzer-
land, this relcnion ofMedievaJ Mariology took the form of a new ILOno-
daslll, what lee Palmer Wandel has called "a conception of the 'Re-
formed' Church in whit:h there were no images."6 In Charles Garside's
chilling de~cription of"l1le war against the idols,"
•

The commmee as a body went il1lo every church III Zurich.

Once inside, they locked the doors behind Ihem, and then,
free from all disturWllce from the curialiS crowds withollt,
began to dismantle the t:hurch_ ... E\'ery standing J.tarue wa~
removed from its niche or ils hase and, togelher with the
basc, taken out of the church, It was then either broken up by
the masons, If made of stone or plaster, or burned, if made of
wood. Every paUlting was taken down from the altars and
burned outJ,icle, All murals were chipped away or scraped off
the walls. The altars were stripped of all images and ves!>els. all
votive lamps were let down and melted outside, and all crud-
fixes were removed_ 7

And many of the mo~t prom inent victims of this 'leal were represema-
dom of the Virgin. But even such Re formt!r~ as Martin Luther, who in
1525 protested Vigorously against this iconoclasm,lI protested no less
Vigorously against what Luther called the" abominable idolatry [gr~l-\'li(ht
AbgiiumyJ'" of Medieval Mariology, an idolatry that was, he said, "not
praising Mary, hut slandering her in the extreme and making an Idol of

". The context of that Refo rmat ion critique was a fundamental recon-
.. ,
h

sideration of the practice of invoktng the sa\llt~. Arucle_~ XIX and XX of

Ulrich Z\\lOgli 's SixtySc.en Articles of I 523 declared that beca\l~e "ChTist is
the only Mediator betwecn God and LIS," it followed '"that we do not need
 IotOI'" Of HlTlf lH

any tnt:diator beyond this life but him,"ll} For, in the words or the
Heiddbcrg C(J(<<bism, "He IS our Mediator." I I Also quoting the words of the
New TeSL1ment, "There is one mediator between God md men, the man
Christ Jesus, ", 2 Article XXI of the AU!}Ibury Confession of 1530, written by
Lmher's colleague Philip Melanchthon, enmled "The Cult of the Saints,"
reinforced this polemiC by defining Christ as "the only highpriest, advo-
cate, and intercessor before God, He alone has promised to hear our
prayers," 13 Although Melam:hthon's Apology of the Augsbur/l Confession did
"grant that the saints in heaven pray for the church in general. as they
prayed for the church universal while they were on eart h," I .. that did
not justify the practice of invoking them for particular needs, Not even
the highest of the saints, the Virgin Mary, therefore, could infringe on the
wle medliltorship of Chris!. For with varying degrees of severity, the
Protestant Reformers were using their slogan of 5()/US Chrisms to ,mack what
John Henry Newman was to caU the system of "cre,ued mediation,"H
the principle that, under the sovereignty of the unique uncreated media-
tion of Christ, there was an entire chain of mediating powers-the
sacraments, the church, the saints, and Mary-which, though created,
conveyed the power of the uncreated mediation of Christ to believers.
In pan this critique of me Medieval wll of Mary \VilS the application
to her cult of the far-reaching Reformation insistence on their slogan of
sola Scriptum, the sole authority of Scripture over tradition-nOI simply the
suprant authority, which almost everyone would accept, hut the 5()lt au-
thority of the Bible, Thus the Tbirty Nine Articles of the Church of England
of 157 1 lb;ted the "inuocation ofSaintes" as the last in a list or·'Romishe
Doctrines" that were "a fonde rfoolish] thing, vainly inuented, and
grounded vpon no warrantie of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the
worde of God," 16 Or, at greater length, Calvin in his dissertation on the
idea asked: "Then who, whether angel or demon, ever revealed to any
man even a syllable of the kind of saints' interventIon they invent~ For
there is nothing about it in Scripture. What reason, then, did they have to
invent it? Surely, when human wit is always seeking after assistance for
which we have no support in God's Word, it clearly reveals its own
faithlessness .·'17 The application of the exclusionary principle of sola
IS;' "ODI Of 'AITH

Scriptum wal> directed nOI o nly against the doctrine of the U1te rc~~ion of
Mary anclthe ~ints hut against the Meclicval proliferatIon af ~taries about
Mary and the saints far which there was no biblical basis. Contrasting the
stark simplicity and credibllllY of the biblical account of Sarah with such
~tori b. lmher assenecl. "The legend.s or accounts of the saints wruch we
had under the papac)' were not written a<.:cording to the pallcrn of Holy
Scripture. "18 And elsewhere he expressed the wish: "Woliid to God that 1
had the time to cleanse the legends and exa.mple~, or that ~omebody else
with a higher spin! would venture [0 do it, they are full. full oflic~ and
dl-""Ception." 19 Particularly 1eCeptive, of course, were legends about biblI-
cal saints. and above all about Mary, for Ihey crowdecl out the testimony
of Script UTI;! about the very qualities that had made them ~aints in the first
place.
At Ihe same time, the doctrine of Mary during Ihe Reformation
underwelll a revival of various early theologies Ihat had been denouncecl
as heresy. including some of the heretical theories aboul Mary examined
in earlier chapters of this book. A.~ the leading historian of the R.ldical
Reformation, George Huntston Williams, has pointed out. the Mariology
of (aspolr SchwencHeld i~~ued in

the glorification of Ihe human nature of Christ and hi~ scrip-

tural discernment of Mary a.s indeed uniq ue among women in
the very words o f Elizabeth after she was filled wnh the Holy
Spi nt: "Ble~sed ut thou, Muy. among women and hle~secl is
the fruit afthy womb," for she in S(hwenckfeld\ own words
"received from the Holy Spirit natural flesh," wherehy she.
unique among \\"Omen[.] fulfilled the prophecy of JeT 3:22:
"'a new thi ng, a woman will encompass iI. man," thaI IS. says
S<.:hwenckfelcl, it was foreseen that Mary, "impregnated
through the Holy Spirit, would carry and give birth \0 God's
and her w n , a son of ~uch glory that his flesh could see no
decomposition. "W

BUI some Radical Reformers went even fu rther. as when Orbc Philips.
rejelling the idea that "the body of Christ had been made by Mary (as the
 "'''''IOffAlTH 157

..llorid thinks and says with such want of understanding regarding it),"
asserted instead thai "God, the Heavenly Father, prepared for Jesus Christ ,
his only begotten Son, a body lHeb. 10:5J. but not of corrupt human
seed [Luke I: 35], rather of his incorruptible seed." For, he continued. "it
i~ impossible fo r the flesh of Ch rist to be formed of the seed of Mary; for
neither the seed of Mary, nor that of any earthly creature can by any
means be the rrue living bread that came down from heaven [John 6:31 -
35]. or be so called." 2 I
In response [0 such speculations .a.mong the Radical Reformers. the
Anglican, Lutheran, and Refo rmed wnfessions of faith reaffirmed the
traditional doctrine of Eastern and Western orthodoxy, which had origi-
nally been for mulated in opposition to Gnosticism, that the entire human
nature of ChriSt, body and sou l. was a creature, was derived from the
created and human body of the Virgin Mary, and was not in any sense
pre-existent. Therefore the Lutheran Formula af Concord of I 577, whicb
devoted a major part of its discussion to differentiating the Lutheran
Reformation from the Calvinist Reforma.tion on such issues of doctrine as
the relation of the tWO naUlIes in the person of Christ. the real presence in
the Eucharist, a.lld double predestination, wa..~ in Ihis case speaking also
for its Calv in ist adversaries when it rejected the teaching "that Ch rist did
not assume his fl.e~h and blood from the Virgin Mary but brought it along
fro m heaven "n In this way Mary once more became. also fo r the main-
line Reformers, what she had alway~ heen: guarantee of the reality of the
incarnation and of the human nature ofChrist. 13
But it would be a mistake, and one into which many interpretations
of lhe Reformation both friendly and hostile have all too eaSily fallen. to
emphasize these negative and polem.ical aspects o f i L~ Mariology at the
expense of the positive place the Protestant Reformers assigned to her in
their theology. 24 They repeated-and ill many cases used their superior
grasp of the original languages of the Bible to reinforce-the cemral
content of the o rthodox confesSion of the first five (.:enmries o f Christian
hi~lOry.l5 For despite the constamly repealed accusations that the doctri-
nal principles of the Reformation, consistently carried out, would and
did lead to .a. repudiation of hiStoric Christian and Catholic orthodoxy,
1\~ W~l>1 I ~Illi

\"'Il('{;iall) of Ihe dogma" of Ihe Trinltr as confessed by til<' Council of

Nicaea in 32 S and [he person of Chri.'1 a~ t:onfesscd by the Council of
Chalcedoll 11\ 451, Luther and CalvllI and their colleagues indignantly
imistl'd that, in the ope/llllg words of [he AUQsburg Confosloo, "we unal1l-
moudr hold and te,l(h, in accordance wllh the decree oflhe Council of
Ninea. un, Th(' ~me words t:ould ha\'c hcen applicd to Ihe decree of the
Coundl of Chalcedon, and to ReformC'd, Calvinist tcachlllg, a~ Thomas F.
Torrance hal> argl]('d In pointing out that" care was taken to repudiate and
avoid all the classlcill errors ill Christolog}' on both ~idc\ of the Chalcedo-
nian fence"v The texts 01! which Torrance WilS commentlng with Ihill
observation, namely, Ihe authorized catechism~ of Ihe Reformed church
III SCOlland, were evidence, morcover, that Ihil> adherence to thc onho~

dox leaching ofLhe t:hurch was not a mere formality or polltlcal ploy b}
the Reformers but what w~s being believed, tallght, and mnfe~~ed in the
concrCl(' lifc of the churches_ Thm the lArger CQu(hi~m of 1648 tallght:
"ChrISt the Son of God lx'came man, by taking to Him~df a true body, and
a reasonable rout. being concei\·cd by the power of the HoI} SpIrit in the
womb of the Virgin Mary. of her subSlallcc, and born of her, }et wIthout
. "18
~m

It was thus possible forWalterT~ppolel in 1962. {Q compile a remark-

able collection of lext~ from Luther, Calvin, Zwingli. and Bullmger under
Ihe titk "The Reformer_, in Prabe of Mary." !9 DraWing on sermons and
devotional material as well as on thcologit:a.l [reatises, he doullnented,
first of all, this cOnlllluing orthodox) of the Mariologr of [he Reformcr~_
Zwingli, for example, called Mary "'he bighesl of creatures next 10 her
Son" and "Mother of God, " and Baltha~ar Hubmaier asserteel her perpet-
ual virginity lO Luther did the same-anel nf)t ollly in his private \\Tltlngs
auel ~crmons, as when he dC.\l,;ribecl Mary as "in chilclhirth and after
childbirth, as ~he was a Virgin Ix-for(' chllclbirth, so she remained."31
Even III the only t:o nfCl>sional statement of liith by him that was offiCially
adopled by Ihe Lutheran church and incorporated into Ihe official collet:
lion ofule Book of Concord of 1580-a~ di~unCI from hisSmoJi CotC'Chism and
lQrgt Catechism, which were also inclueled but weT'{' not, strictly ~p('aking,
con fessions-the Smolcald Articles of 1537, the Latin [(,xt contamcd the
 .. ODO> 0 ' rAIHI 159

words (which did not, however, appear in the German version): "from
Mary, pure, holy, and Ever-Virgin [tX Maria pum, sanaa, Semper Virgin(l"32
But beyond the orthodoxy of their language and teaching abou t Mary, the
Protestant Reformers one after another spoke o f her wilh warmth and
dedication, as when Luther in 152 1, the year of his excommunication by
Pope Leo X, could dose his Commmtary aD [he M08Dj/icO[ with the words:
"May Christ grant us this through the intercession and for the sake of His
dear Mother Mary! Amen. "n Such sentiments, which could easily be
duplicated, belied the i rnpressioll, whir.:h the Protestant Reformers them-
selves sometimes gave and which their opponents often m agnified, that
they "....ere sweeping asIde the entire accumulation of Christian devotion
to Mary in the name of res toring the primitive Christianity of the apos-
tolic church.
More than either of these principles, solo grotia, "by grace alone," or
solo Scriptura, "by Scripture alone," hO\o,rever, the Reformation slogan that
epitomized Mary's pOSitive position in the Reformation was sola fide, "by
faith alone." For in the theology of the Reformer<> she was the model of
faith, as the Reformation redefined it,
A favori te passage of the Reformers was Paul's statemen t, "Faith
cometh hy hearing , and hearing by me word ofGod,"H which provided
the title for an imponant twentieth-century stud y ofRefonnation theol-
ogy by Ernst BizerY' That connection between faith and the hearing of
the word of God had, of course, been a component of the definition of
faith all along. As one of the mad of faith, hope, and love set forth by the
apostle Paul, 36 faith, and consequently the function of the word o f God as
the means by which faith was aroused and sustained, had always received
its share of attention : "Since, therefore, faith comes by hearing, and
hearing by the word of God [Cum ((go fides sir u aooHu, aoojtus auttnl per mbum
Cluisril ," Thomas Aquinas could argue in his Commrntary on the ScntrnCCi.J7
But the Reformers, beginning with Luther, taught that authentic Chris-
tian love was dependent on faith and therefore, d espite the identification
oflove as "the grealest o flhese, "38 assigned to fait h the central position
in that triad and therefore assigned to the word of God what must be
called a sa<.;rarnental fUIl<.;1 ion: as the SiI.(ramellts were, in a formula that
ibO '-I ' >I' 0 noTI<

the Reform~tion took OI'cr from AuguSIlIlt', ~ "visible word,"J'J so lhe

preaching and tcaching of the word of God could havc been called an
audible ~acramenL Thu~ Cahin, in a carcfull), crafted discussion. ddincd
"faith 10 be a knowledge of God's will toward us, per'"t'ivcd from hi.,
Wm d . "~n
Maq became the obvious case study of thi~ for Luther. a~ Ihe openmg
words of Mar)"s MagnIficat showed 11lIll that "holiness of spirit
(;onsists in nothing else than in faith pure and simple," In a chuacteristic.
sUlllmar)' of the Reformation doclrineofjuslificalion by faith and nOI by
worl"" hl' im.iSled on th~' basis ofMary\ faith "that worh breed nothing
but discrimination. sin, and di~cord. while faIth alone mak('\ men piou~.
united. and peaceable," Therefore "faith and the Gospel . arc the
highesl good, ' whIch no one should let go_". r For when Mary said to
the angel Gabriel (in Luther's German), "Lelll happen \0 me as rou have
said [Mir gcs(hehe, lViedu ~Bt oost).--u this was above all an expression of
her faith. And "through ~uch faith alone ~he was saved and freed from
sin. "·n
In a bold definition of faith-which was in some wars an alllicipa-
lion of Blaise Pa~ul's farnou~ argumall du purL "One has to \\ager , and
calculate the gain and loss of wagering whether or not God exists"-
Luther a.~SCrted in 1522: "Faith does not require in/ormation. knowl
edge_or cenamt)'. but a free surrender and a joyful bet on his unfclt.
untried. and unknown goodness_'-H In his Commmlary an GaJOltans, b)
contrast, Luther spoke more positively about the quest for certam t):
"Thi~ b the reason why our theology is certam: it sm,tche~ u, away from

ourselves and places us o utside ourselves, so that we do not depend on

our own strength, conSCIence, experience. person, or worls, but depend
011 that which is outside ourselves. that is. Oil the pronme and truth of

God, wllich cannot deceive. "'15 For bOlh of these definitions, Luther, lj ke
lhe apoqle Paul, took Ahraharn as the biblical figure who especially
exemplified thi~ characterLStic of faith; and in his lengdlY portrait of
Abraham a~ pan of the l«tures 011 Grnesis of I 535-4.5 he dwelt ahO\e allan
Abraham's faith, which "was (ountcd to him for righteousness ."~ 6 Sm
Ihe fajth of Abraham, which caused him to forsake Vr of the ChakkCl.
and venmre forth into the unknown ill obedience ( 0 the word and
promise of God and Ihen 10 be willing to offer up his only son, was
mal(;hed by the faith of the Virgin Mary, who also offered up her only
5011 . Even in the COntext of an attack on those who" exalt the Virgin Mary
too highly and praise her for having knO\vn eve rytlling," therefore, Lu-
ther could speak of her as "blessed and endowed with every kind of grace
19tbmfdtyet lind hoch btgnadet mit allerley goodml" and describe how "God led
her in such a way that he concealed many things from her," which he
took as a reminder that "in Christe ndom nothing should be prea<:hed but
the pure word of God. "4~
A particularly faScinating aspect of the relauon befWeen the Protes-
tam Reformation and lhe cult of the Mary as Virgin and Queen was the
cull of Elizabeth T as Virgin and Queen, as Gloriana. As Roy Strong has
sugge~ ted , "The cult of Gloriana was skillfully created to buttress public
order, and even more, deliberately to replace the pre-reformation exter-
nals of religion, Lhe cult of the Virgin and saints with their attendant
images, proce.ssions, ceremonies and secular rejoicing."48 Ailhough it
has been brought imo question by some scholars, who have ~ee n it as a
later Iheory,49 there are 01 1 least some indications (hat Elizabeth con-
sCiously invo ked the paralleL For example, the "Virgin Queen of Wal
singham" was the name of the most widely venerated image of Mary in
pre-Reformation England. AltllOugh it had been destroyed before the
reign o f Elizabeth, it was widely venerated into the sixteenth ccntury:~o
and Elizabeth's title of "Virgin Queen" would seem to have been bor-
rowed from it. Ed mund Spenser did seem to be invoking the parallel,
conSciously and frequently, as in Tht Sh(Jlhrordes Calender:

Offayre Elisa be your silver song,

that blessed wight:
The Aowre of Virgi ns, may sh~ Aorish long.
In princely plight.
For she is Syrinx daughter \vithoUl spolle,
Which Pan the shcpheards God of her begot:
So sprong her grace
 161 " 0 1:)1 10 1' , ;,ITH

of he.:l\cnly race,
No mOrlaU blclm~he may her bloHe, ~ J

lho~c hnal Ihrcc line~ wunding Wlmi\[ahbly like an echo of Medieval

Mariology. I\nd /lcar the beginlllng ofTht faerie QU«Jlt' he addressed Queen
Elizilbern III sImilar languilge:

And with them eke, i> Godde<...~e heiluenly bright,

Mirrour of grill,;e and Milicslie diume,
GTeilt La.dy of the grCillC5.t Isle, whose lighl
lIke phallus Iilmpe throughout the world dOlh shine,
Shed thy fam.~ beilmes lillO my feeble eyne,
And raise my thoughts too humble and too vile,
To thinke o(that true glorious type of thine.
The argument of mine affiicted slile:
The whir,;h to hearl', vouchsafe, 6 dearesl dTed a-while.52

Just as in hi~ Paradise Lost, John Milton could not avoid attention to Eve, hut
also to Mary as the Second Evc,S) so likewisc in his Paradise Regainttl Mary
had to haye a place. a~ when he had Christ explain:

These growing thoughts my Mother soon perceiving

B) words at limes cast forth, inly rejoiced,
And s,ud to me apart: High aTe thy Ihoughts
o Son, but nourish thcm and lei them soar
To what height sacred virtue and true worth
Can rahe them. though abewe example high.H

Thus a special case of ··ProteSlant ~vbriolog)'" was the place of Mary in

sacred poetry, hymnody, worship. and devotion. which perpetuated
~ome of the.\c patterns of the Reformation into modern {Jmes, as I noted
in an eartier chapter on the basL~ of John A. L Riley's hymn of 1906, "Yc
Watche.rs and Ye Holy Ones."H Again, in the hymn "Crown Him wilh
Many Crown~,·' Originally by Matthew Bridges but with additions and
~uppJcments by other~yl Chri~t was saluted as "Fruit of the mystic
Rose, I As of thal Rose the stem, ,. making Mary in ProtestJTllism the
 MODEL O ~ f AIT fi 163

Mystic Rose that she had been in the piety of the Middle Ages and the
Counler-Reformation.
In art as well as in poctty. Mary continued to claim a place in the
affections of those who on doctrinal grounds did not share the traditional
reverence for her. So it was that, as Owen Chadwick has suggested. "The
ArutWKiation by Fra Angelico. for a cell of the Dominican priory of San
Marco in Florence. [was] one of the tWO or three picrures which most
helped Protestants. as well as Catholics. to remember St. Mary with
affection." 57 The relation of the art of Albrecht Durer to the Reformation
continues to be the object of 5erious investigation. 58 Most pertinent to
our theme here was his cycle of woodcuts. The Life of M(\ry.59 A colleague
and in some ways a pupil of Durer, and even an artistic subject of his. was
Lucas van Leyden. 60 Whatever his own complex relation to the Refonna-
tion may have been . his woodcut ofl1\( Vi'llin with liVl) Angds, dated 1523,
epitomized the Reformation tension being discussed here: between a
retention of the DalHean. and universally Medieval, depiction of the
Virgin Mary as Queen of Angels (and therefore, at least by implication,
Queen of Heaven), and a reinterpretation of her in the light of the
Reformation principles ofsoler Scriptum, soler grotler, and above all sola 6de as the
(orally human Maid of Nazareth, a peasant girl snatched by the initiative
of God from her ordinary life to take her great and historic part in the
drama of salvation.
 ,,
• ,<-
• , "
•

P.olo ."d GUJnnni Vt'Il~mno. The CO)[_I,(IO of th, Virgin. I 3 S8. Copyright The frick
Col lcctlon, New York
12 The Moter Glorioso
and the Eternal Feminine

Mary hath chosen tnt MtLn port,

which sholl not I>t taken mvay from her.
-Luk( 10:38-42

hen truly archetypal mOtifs and figures of tradition cea..~e to be

the objects of the de\'Otion to which they have been attached for many
centuries, the afterglow can sometimes seem eYen brighter than the glow
So it has been true in a preeminent sense of the figure of Jesus that, by a
phenomenon that could be labeled Chwaocentric agnosticism. "as re-
speet fo r the organized church has declined, reverence fo r Jesus has
grown." I And so lL has been with his Mother. In the Romantic poetry of
many countries duri ng the nineteenth century, therefore. Mary came to
glow with a halo that was in some respects no less resplendent than the
one with which the umophiSlicated piety of the people, the speculations
of the theologians, .ilnd [he Iimrgy of the church had .ildo rned her. For if.
with Rene WeUek. Rommticism is defined as "mal atlempl. apparently
doomed to fai lure md abandoned by our own time, lO identify sub,eu
and object. to reconcile man md nature, consciousness md unCOnsciOUS -
ness by poetry which is 'the first and \a.st of all knowledge: "2 then
William Wordsworth, the poet from whose preface to the 1800 edition
of lyrical Ballads the closing words of that definition were taken, well

'"
illustrated the situation. Wordsworth's early "radical Protestantism," as
Geoffrey Hartman has called it,3 contimlcd 10 manifest IL~elf even in hi.~
laler and more conservative Eccleslosticol Sonnets. As a Protestant, he seems 10
have been quite sure, as he said there, that '·From false assumption rose.
and fondly hailed ! By superstition, spread the Papal JlOWer "4 Neverthe·
less, he was able 10 address the Vi rgin Mary Ihis way:

Mother! whose virgin bosom was lmcrosl

WIth the le.lst shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman I above aU women glonfied,
Our taintro nature's solitary boost;
Purer than foam on central ocean toSt;
Brighter than eaMern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied rose~, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begms on heaven's bluc coast;
Thy Image falls 10 carth. Yet some, 1 ween.
Not unforgivcn the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All thai was mixed and reconciled in Thee
Of mother's lm"e With malden purity,
of high with low. celestial with terrene!s

For if Mary truly was" celestial" as well as "terrene," that seemed to come
dost' to callmg her Queen of Heaven Here Wordsworth e<:hoed the
portrayal of "the coronauon of the Virgm," which became a standard
part of the iconography of Mar}' dllring the twelfth century, regularly
depicted her as Sitting <1.1 Christ's right \1iI.I1d, and it was;!. continuation of
this understanding when later painters showed Christ or God the Father
or the enure Trinif}' invcsllng her with the crown_ 6
Similarly, Mar}' Ann Evans, as the anonymous translator into English
or the radical Life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss. knew ver}' well that it
had relegated the Virgin Mary and the virgin birth to the realm of myth,
for she had translated the section about this, which was entitled (in her
translation) ·'History or the Conception of Jesus Viewed as a My thus."' 7
But later in her life, writing as George Eliot, in perhaps her greates t
 ),(AHk GLOklOSA 167

novel, she had Tenius Lydgate, the discredited physician, exclaim about
the protagonist of the novel, Dorothea Brooke Casaubon: "This young
creature has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary. She eVidently
thinks nothing of her own futu re, and would pledge away half her
Income at once, as If she wamed noilling for h erself but a ch air to sit in
from w hich she can look down with those clear eyes at the mortals who
pray to her. She seems to have what I never saw in any woman before-a
fountain of friendship towards men"; and a little later Dorothea was
described as haVing "the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a maier dolor05<l"
(which, for late rn'entieth-cenrury American readers, the editor of Mid-
dltmarch felt obliged to explain in a footnote as "a title of the Virgin
Mary").8
Simibr passages could easily be added from Romantic poets of the
several national Iuera.rures, because, as a German poet said,

I see thee, Mary. beautifully depicted

in a thou~nd pictures;
Yet none of them can portray thee
As my soul perceives thee.

I only know that ever since then

The tumult of the world has vanished like a dream,
And a heaven. ineffably sweet,
Abides eternally in my hear!.

[lch sehe dich in tausend Bildern

Maria liehlich ausgedriickt:
Doeh keins von allen kann dich schildern,
Wie meine Seele dich erblickt.

Teh weiB nur, daB der Welt Getummel

Seitdam mir wie tin Traum verweht,
Und ein unnennbar sUBer Himmel
Mir ewig im Gemute steht];9
and tho~e thousand piCtures came UItO view throughout the poetry.
music. and paHlung of the Romantic CCl\tllry. It will not. however, be
on that German poet, but on his more celebrated countryman, Johallll
Wolfgang 'Ion Goethe. that this chapter Wll! concentrate. and specifi-
caUl' on Goethe's Faun a~ thc supreme ex,l.InpJe ohhe Virgin Mary as an
enduring archetype.lo Goethe\' relation to hL~tork Christianity. tOO,
was a complex one. In lhe Com'a5atIOM wuh Goethe in [he LaSI Yrors of His Lift
recorded by Johann Peter E(;kermann, Goethe W.lS reported .lS h.l'ling
s.lid on II Mar(;h 1832, lust cleven d.lYs before his death: "Be)'ond the
grandeur and [he moral ~Ievation of Christialllty, as it sparkles and
srunes in the Gospels. the human mind will not advance." But the
wntext oflhat declaration made it clear that he was dOing anything b(il
affirming the orthodox and catholic faith of the church_I I Nevertheless,
like Wordsworth. Goethe was profoundly fascinated by the m),stiul
figure oflhe Virgin Mary,;md especia.lly by her exallcd status as Maler
Gloriosa and the Etemal Feminine [das Ewig-WdbJiche]. For like Dante's
Oil'inc Comtdy, and apparently in a conscious echOing of it, Goethe's Foust
began in the setting of Holy Week and ended in Paradise with the vision
of Mary and the Eternal Feminine. But before Mar)' manifested herself
as the Mater Glorio~a in the closing ~cene of Foust. she had first been
seen as the Mater Doloro~il 11 in her de~pair, Gretchen prayed to her, in
a fervent pclltion to the Virgin Mary inspired by the Stabiu Matn 00-
JOfosa.13 As the drama turned OUl, then, "the young woman who is at
first the obj(;'{:( of Faust's purely sensual passion, ll1spired by Meph-
isto-Gretchcn-bccomes in fact Mephisto·s victorious rival in the
battle for faust's soul."l-+ for she was IOld that it was her elevation to
"higher ~phcrcs" of glory that would become the means for Faust to
atlalll to thme spheres of glory, too. 1 ~
Those words wcre addressed to tlle Woman Penitcnt, Formerly
Called Gretchen by the Maler Gloriosa, seen as the special refuge for
those who, like Gretchen. had been "eills)' to seduce" .:Ind were "hard to
save" but who were now "penitent women. in need of gr.:lce." I 6 The
Chorus of PCllitents addressed the Mater Gloriosa wilh the prai~c,
"Thou dost ~oar to tbe heights of the everlasting kingdoms." and with
 "ArtK £:, O~I OS A 169

the petition. "Receive our pleadmg. thou incompau.ble one. who art
full of grace!" 17 She was "full of gra<.:e,·' as she had been addressed by
the angel of the .rnnunciation, "Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum." I8
The penitents were "in need of gra<.:e," and through her grace and
purity their impurity was healed. But the Mater Gloriosa did not repre-
sent the healing only of their ind ividual lusts, nor only of Faust's con-
flicts; as has been said about such theological terms III this scene, "it 15,
of course, contrary to the sense to interpret them according to the strict
sense of the terminology of the church, but it would be forcing things
to e..xciucle echoes of this completely." J 9 Not only was it the case that
"the several persons of Margarete-Galatea-Helen are now subswned in
the one person of Mary Mother ofGod":lO but through these "echoes"
of themes thaI had been sounding throughout the rest of the work, the
several titles with which she ...vas identified here in the doslllg scene
may be said to have achieved a new synthesis of disparate elements, nOt
by negating them but by exalting them LO the level of the sublime, in
what one scholar called "that loving fusion of pagan and Christian con-
victions in which Goethe . .. found his own final religIOUS peace."21
Those titles were brought together by Doctor Marianus, whose Im-
portance for the outcome of the drama has been well summarized in th is
sensitive observation by CyrU!; Hamlin: "As a sublime counter-figure to
DoclOr Faustus. in his study at the outset of the drama. this mystical
devotee of the Virgin represents the highest level of spiritual perfection
attainable with in the human sphere. Thematically he may be compared
with Nereus in his devotion to Galatea III the final scene o f the 'Classical
Walpurgis Night.' Through Doctor Marianus the theme of the Eternal
Feminine is re-introduced to Faust in its highest traditional form."u
Doctor Marianus brought the titles together in the final two lines of
the v'lOrshlpful ode with which he mtroduced the transcendent closing
hymn. The ode was spoken first to the penitents: "Look upwards to this
saYing look, all who have been made tender through repentance, in
o rder to transform yourselves than kfully intO your blessed destin),."
Then Doctor Marianus turned to the Mater Gloriosa herself: "Let ever)'
higher sense be placed at th), service. Virgin. Mother, QUm1, Goddess: continue
10 grant gracel"l) Such a heaping up of mle ... was a familiar devICe from
earlier pa..'>sage~ in the drama. H The~e four titles had bet>:n anticipated in
Ihc other ode of Doctor Mariam] .... ,hortly preceding tim on..,: "The
Gloriolls One in the t:ClltCr, in her wreath ()f'lars. the Queen of Heal' en. I
can tell from her splendor. She is the Supreme Ruler in the world'''1S
And again "Vlrglll, pure in the mO'>t beautiful sense, Mother worthy of
honor, our chosen Queen. equal In birth to the gods,"l'" He Implored
her to "grant approval 10 that wln<.:h earnestly and tenderly mO\es tlus
man's breast and which with a holy passion oflm'e he bears to thee,"ll
He prayed, "Let every higher sense be plat:ed at thy sen'lce,"18 Hy sllch
petitions, thc various yearnings and llllUitions in "this man's breast,"
cI'ery "passion of 10I'e." including even Faust's original "<.:oarse passion
oflon" "1.9 and "el'ery higher sense," a'> the:.e had mall1fe~ted them~clves
in Fau"'I's development throughout the work, were being raised to the
exalted plane of the Virgin Mary, and thus of Christ her Son. and thus of
God the Father in heaven (where this entire "postlude in heaven parallel
to the 'Prolog\IC in Heaven' "}O was being played, with no action Jfl

heaven between th~ two scene,),

"In the sOIerio!ogy, h in the ethics, of Goethe's play," one com-
mentator has suggested, ,olm-e, not egOism. is both the principaJ instru-
ment of Gra.ce and the highest value,") I The s,wing power ofthatlm'e
through eKh of the three oo:,:upants of that exalted plane-Mary, her
Son Jesus Chri~t, and God the Father-had already been expliCitly ad-
umbrated by the Woman Pellltem Formerly CaUed Gretchen while she
was ~till alive on eanh, in her pennentlal Sighs for grace bef(Jre the
"devotional image of the Mater Dolorosa." as she prayed a ]hlraphrase
of the Medieva] Stdoot Matn Dolof05O: "Indllle thy countenance graciously
to my need, thou who art abounding in pain., With the sword in thy
heart [Luke 2:35] and with a thousand pams thou do~t look up at the
death of thy Son. Thou dost look to the Father and send ~Ighs upward
for [thy Son'~] trlal and f{)f thine own")2 Now at the end, having
become a participant III the grat;e and glory of hea\'en. she prayed to
Mary once more, Her prayer "b tran~po~cd into a radiant IluJur key,")]
 "'~TH GlO ~ IO SA 171

and it was no longer addre...sed to the Mater DQlorosa but to the Mater
Glorio~: "Indine, oh incline, thy countenance graciously to my happi-

ness, thou incomparable one, thou radiant one! The one whom I first
loved, now no longer troubled, is coming back," H The sharp contrast,
and yet the speclallxmd, bet\\1!e1l Gretchen as the fallen womall, whom
her own brother had called "a whore," and Mary as the "Virgin, pure in
the most beaUlifuJ sense, "35 became the subjc(,;t of prayers to the Virgin
on Gretchen's behalf by the three Women Penitenls of this dosing
scene, with a devotional ver:s.ion of the logical argument a malori ad mlDtlS,
from the greater to the le~eJ': "Thou who dost not deny thy presence to
women who have sinned greatly and dost elevate a repentant recovery
to the level of eternity [which was how all three of them had been
treated, despite the magnitude of their SillS]. grant also to thi!> good
soul. who forgot herself only once and who did not know that she was
doing wrong, thy fitting forgiveness~"36 If even they had not been
denied the grace of forgivene~s, so the prayers argued, she certainly
ought to receive it,
It was significant for this Special bond thai the prayer of each of the
duee Penitents to Mary on behalf of Gretchen, and much earlier Faust's
lamentation over Gretchen, should have wnlained the most detailed
references anywhere in the drama to the redemptive work of Christ,
who nevertheless, "significandy, does not appear and is not invoked"
directly as such even here,37 When Mephistopheles sneered about
Gretchen, "She is not the first," this was apparently a w rbatim quota
tiOll from the accounts of an actual case that ocwrred in Frankfurt in
1771, as reported by Goethe,jM But Faust's reaction to the sneer was to
explode, with lIS reference to "rendering sausfaction for guilt" appar-
ently intended a.s an allusion to the atoning death of Christ: "Not the
first! How utterly miserable! No human soul can comprehend that more
than one creature has de.sccnded to the deplh~ of this misery, that the
death-agony of the first was not enough to render satisfacuon for the
guilt of all the others in the eyes of the One who pardons eternally! "39
Mephistopheles always h ad the typical devil's horror of th e cross,40 In
thClr onginal hosule encollnter, rau~t tonfrontcd Mephistopheles-as-
poodle with thl' crucifix and with the death of Chri~1. whom he de-
.cribed as "the never ocgottcn One, the ineffable One, who was pawcd
Ollt through all the heavens and wa~ blasphemolbly pierted" on the
cross_il And now, before Mary as Mater GloriOSd, ('ilch of the Ihree
penitents in her turn intoned the litany. by referring to the person of
Christ and ciung the authority of some aspect of his life And dealh H
The first was the Mulier i>e<.(;atrh 41 In the exegetiCAl tradition,
though /lot in the text of the GospelllSelf. she had been ldenllfied with
Mary Magdalene H and WilS the Mary of whom the Dies frat. ~Ul\g at the
Requiem Ma~s fOT Gretchen's mother, prayed: "Thou who didst absolve
Mary. and listen to the petition of the Ihief, Iholl hAst also grAnted hope
to me." But It was smkJllg that this pClillon. with its confident reference
\0 diVine rorgiven~s, was omitted from the Dit:> lroe in that scene in Part
One, though it was ethoed here 111 Part Two. Paraphrasing the Gospel,
the Magdalene based her petition on ChriSl's statement that "Her sins,
which are many, are forgiven; for she lOlled muth, "H and addressed it
to the Virgin Muy "By the love that mAde tears flow as balsam on the
feet of thy divinely transfigured Son, despite the scorn of the Pharir.ees;
by the Jar that so richly poured OUlIIS incense; by the locks of hair that
so gently dried the SaLred limbs.""" The second was the Mulier Samar-
itana, who encountered Christ attht wcll:t1 She now made "the well to
which Abraham Ol)te brought his flotk~ \0 be willered" and at which
"the cup was permitted to touch and coot the Sanor's lips" into An
allegory of the" superabundam, eternally dear fountAin" of grace "that
flows from there through all the worlds ..... g And the third was Muia
Aegyptica, whose life was recorded not in the New Testament but in the
ACla SIloctorum, induding her conversion while on iI pilgrimage to the
Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. "the consecrated pla(;e where lhe Lord
WAS laid 10 rest," and then her fony-seven years of penante AS a hermit
III the desen easl ofJordan." 9 Although it does seem "that accordlllg 10
the earliest conception of the closing scenes It was to be Christ who
would free Faust's soul from hell after his victOry over Lucifer," '>0 Christ
himself did not appear directly and w~~ not prayed \0 dlTecdy in these
 MATH (;LOR I O~A 173

petitions. R.uher, all of dlese references to the hiswry o f Christ were

invoked in a prayer to Mary in support of the petition for Gretchen-a
reminiscence of the clming cantos of Dante's PamdiSQ, with the descrip-
tion of the Virgin Mary by Bernard ofClauvaux as "the one whose face
most resemhles that of Christ."S I
But she was C.1lled "Virgin" -and then "Mother." TIlis can be taken
as an echo of the "pantheistic" symbol oflhe Mothers in Part Two, for
the theme of Nature as the All did resound here in the dosing scene of
Foust. TIlUs th e content o f redemption was defined as "being saved in the
company of the AU."S1. That "company of the All" was one of the very
things whi ch "earnestly and tenderly moves this man·s breaq and
which with a holy passion of love he bears" to the Virgin Mother. 53 In
keeping with this ·'holy pa!>sion of loye," the mighty forces of Nature,
according to the Pater Profundus, "are messengers of love, they pro-
claim that which surround~ us in eternal creativity. "Sol It dOel> nOI seem
to be an exaggeration to conclude that "this transfigured Nature be-
comes a metaphor o f love. It is the only theme al the conclusion of Part
T....'O of MUSt. "ss And JUSt as those forces of a transfigured Nature surged
everywhere and yet proVided continun y and stability, "so it is almighty
loye that shapes and cares for the All,"5'-i appuently yet another echo of
Dante's ParadiSQ, this time of the closing line of its Marian \'ision about
"the love that moves the sun and all the other stars," 57 as well as of the
words of God to the angcls in the Prologue in Heaven aheHlI being
"embraced hy that which is becoming, which works and lives eternally,
with the chaste bonds of love," and of Faust's reminiscence of his
youthful sense of "the love of heaven."58 Immediately preceding the
prayer of the Pater Profundus. however, came that of th e Pater Eestat-
ieus, which opened by calling God "the eternal torch of joy, the glow-
ing bond of love, "S9 and dosed with another reference to the theme or
the All, but to a way oftran~cending it in eternal love, "until everything
worthless is put 10 flight and what continues to shine is the star, the core
of everlasting love.·'60 That transcending even of the All in tlle Eternal
was the fulfillment of the aspirations of Faust's science and his palllhe-
Ism, for which "everything transitory is only a parable" of what
JbldC!>;"1 .-.nd II \\"~s this III Mary. not only as Virgm but as Mother and
as the Ewrnal Femillllll· ... ·'
Yet. III the words Immediately precedlllg these. the Eternal Femi-
nllle who Wil~ Virgin and Mothn was called Queen and Goo(lcss as

wcll b3 and \Va!> Lhu.!> thl' fulfillment aIM) of the aspirations of Fau~t""
poetic polytheism. and ~pe<.:ificall) of the t}'pology repreM!nted in the
figures of Lecla. Galatea. and Jb\we all Helen of Troy- Leda had appeared
in a vision a_~ Qucell_ b " Helen was repealedly hailed .!>implr with the
mle Qlleen. 6 \ even when .. he was being ldemificd .. ~ the sacrificial
victim. M Elsewhere she was laheled as "til<' high Queen ".,] Faust ex-
panded on the lllle, ~pcaking to her a.!> the Qllecil whose arrow had
found il~ mark in h1l116~ and as "the Ruler who. thc moment ~he
appeared. al>sumcd the throne. "69 She al~o ust!d the tllic Quccn in
referring 10 herself Thc title Goddcs.!>, applied at thc end of the drama
10 Mar)'. was also used carlll;:r for variOus deities: the Sun. the 11.10011.
Nike. Galatea. and the Mothers,l° Yet to Faust. Helen was tht: preell11-
nem holder of that title. 100, His incredulous exclamation at the imlial
\'i~ionof her. ulling her "the sum IOtal of the content of all the
heavcns" and a~k.tng, "Is 1\ po,,--,ible that ~omething hke thi~ Gin be
found all earth?"71 alread), put her lIltO that realm.
Bm when ~he appeared to him in pcrl>Orl. wming baLk to hfe out of
the mi~t~ of Classical Amiquity. he told her: "To rou lowe the ~pr i ngs
of e\'ery .action and the qUlIltessence of passion. I devote m)'self to rou
IIIaffection. love. worslup. res in madnc,~,"l1 The Poet. 'pea.king for
Fa.ust and for all those present. prol.:ceded to express lhat "wonhlp" as.
watching her kiss Fall~l for the fir~t time, he de.~crihcd her as the
Goddess. When she embraced Faust for the last time and disappeared.
leanng her garment behmd. the Phorqad (Old him to keep the gar-
memo became although "II is not the Goddess an, morc" and he had
lost her. the garment wa~ sull "divine."lJ The vision of "godllkc"
femmine figurt'$ that Fa.ust then experienced-followed ImrnediatcJ)
h)' a \ i~lOI\ of "my rno~t youthful ~\lmmum bonum, of which I have
been depTlI'ed for lerr long." which ~{'em~ to ha\'e been ,m ob\'ioll5
reference to Grctl.:hen-Illay be seen a~ a prCl.:ognilloll of the dosing
~cene: "Yes, my eyes do not deceive me~ I see it, on a sunlit couch,
gloriously stretched out, but truly gigantic-the godlike form of a
woman! It resembles Juno, Leda, Helen , With what majestic loveliness
It shimmers before my eyes!"H For to Faust, Helen was "the role object
of my yearning," but she was more: "The eternal being, equal in birth
to the gods, as great as she is lender, as majestic as she is lovable!"7S
And "equal in birth to the gods" was the epithet used agam here in the
dosing scene by Doctor Ma.rianus for Mary the Virgin.76 Under the
titles Queen and Goddess, then, the Virgin was the sublime fulfillment
of Faust's vision of a ''the. godlike form of a woman that resembles Juno,
Leda, Helen" at the beginning of Act IV of Part Two, just as she was,
under the title Mother, the fulfillment of his vision of Nature as Mother
at the beginning of Part One and elsewhere throughout the drama. and
at his visit to the Mothers. The title addressed to her by Doctor Mar-
ianus, when "in mystical rapture" he called her Supreme Sovereign of
the World. likewise seemed to bring these two motifs together,77 In a
sublimely ironic way. therefore, thi~ fulfilled eschatologically the pre-
diction of Mephistopheles after the podon in !.he Witch's Kitchen that
Faust would now "see Helen in ever}' woman." except that what he
now saw was not Helen, but Mary, as he traveled "from Gretchen and
Helen through Sophia, which brings with it the best of our inner life.
higher to Mary. who alone, as the supreme center ofhwnanity, lifts the
upward look into the miracle of the mystery. "7H
Thus the final salvation of Faust was assured as, like the Boy Souls,
he was invited to "'rise upward to a higher circle a.nd go on growing
imperceptibly."79 These word..~, "rise upward." pointed in the same
upward dirC<:tion as the final words of the drama, which {;clehrated the
Ultimate Reality in its relalion to that which Aoated in shifting appeiU-
ances. as !.he transcendent vision of Mary made the quest sublime. For
"all that is transitory is only a parable. Here the inadequate becomes an
event. Here the indescribable is accomplished. The Eternal Feminine
leads us upward. "80
 •
- ~i

,I
•
- ..r
•
,
,
•
•
"" - ~

• •

tv \r H ,,
- -
Th~ App.lrI!i,,,, \0 JUln D'~go. ,:nl(''- u,~ from \h~ i 68~ ...dilian of LUI< BeH,rl T~nco.
~kidoJ ok )"k,",o In d r"""p'o. r \l,'''S,uso OnQt!'. qUI TUN d So"Ill.rio dl Jo V;tlP M.HO S Strio", <It
G..Joi,pt. (Coun~,)' of Ihr Sp'-'<.:l~l CnJi...::ti<lI1<, Ull]\~r"'r of ArilOn~ libruy. TllC<.<"'In)
J3 The Woman Clothed wi th the Sun

hid It shall come to pass in the last days. sailn God,

J wJlJ pour out my Spirit OD all flesh:
and your 501lS and your daughtClS shall prophcs)'
and your young mm 5haIJ let ~isioru.
and your old men sholl dream dreams.
-Am 2:/7,}od 2:28

!though African-American spirituals. with their profound and

powerful identification between the slave experience in North America
and the history of Israel, contained rdauvely fev.' references to Muy.
probably be<.lUse the churches of most of the slaves were Evangelical and
Protestant rather than Roman Catholi{;, it i~ striking to find. in one of
these spirituals. Mary designated as "lila! woman clothe' with lhe sun.
moon under her feet ." I For the application to the Virgin Mary of that utle
from the words of the Book of Revelation. "And there appeared a great
wo nder in heaven: a woman clothed wilh the sun [muiJer amlCIO soie]. and
the moon under her feel, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,"
was characteristic of the Roman Catholic ralher Ulan the Protestant tradi -
tion of New Testament interpretation. 2 More speCifically, it has been used
in lhat tradition to justify and validate the apparition, not only to the seer
of the Apocalypse but to later visionaries, of that same '\vouder in
heaven " and of Mary as the Woman Clothed wllh the Sun titerally
thousands of such app.tritions of the Virgin have been reported lhrough
the centuries, beginning with this oue ill tht' Book of Rev elatiOil. Gill' of

'"
17~ WO MA N nOT lIl:D W i tH HH SO N

the earliest came In the fourth century. as reponed by the philosophical

theologian and m~\lic Gregory of Nyssa. in a sermon in his biography of
Gregory the Wonder-Worker.J
In spite of the eminence of tIle sainI and theologian who reported it.
that early apparition never received official approval by responsible
church authoritie~_ In fact. although the Impression has been Widespread
among critia that the church fmters such apparition:.. along with other
supcrstitiom, in order to hawk its wares to the gullible," the history of
their rC{:eption clearly l>hows that. to the COntrary. "the Church is vcry
prudent with regard to app'aritiOns, and accords them a low statWj be-
cause they are signs which reach us through our senses and are subject to
the illusions of sublectivity."~ So observed Rene Liurentln. the leading
authority on the history of Marian apparitions, whose critical edition of
the documenL<; ~urrounding and following the appearaJlce~ at Lourdes in
1858 is an indispemable repository ofhislOrical source malenal for the
entire history of Marian apparitions. 6 A catalog published in I 962 of the
Marian apparitions that had been ecdesiastit:ally acknowledged \0 be
worthy of pious belief, out of the innumerable accounts reported by
individuals and groups. produces the follOWing list of len. in chronologi-
cal order of their happening (which dId not always correspond to the
chronological order of their offid~1 acknowledgment):'

9-12 D«eml>el 1531; at Guadalupe. Mexico. to Juan Diego;8

17 NOI'nnhfr 1830: at Paris, to SiMer Catherine Labourc;'iI
19 Stptcmhfr 1846: at La Salene in the French Alps ne.u Gren-
oble. to Maximin Giraud and Melanie Calvat; 10
II February-16 July 1858: at Lourdes, France, to Bernadette
Soubiroux; II
12-13 Januury 1866: at Filippsdorf (Philippsdorf). now in the
Czech Republic. to Magdalena Kade;
17 January 1871: at Pontmain in Brittany;
8 Jul~ 1876; at Pompeii. holly;
13 May-13 Dewbrr 1917; at Fatima. Portugal. to three children.
Lucia. Francisco. and Jacinta; 12
 WOIoU I' Cl01HUl W I TH TH~ $U " 1111

29 November 1932-3 January 1933: at Bcauraing, Belgium: 13 and

15 }anllary-2 Ftbruary 1933: at Banneux, Belgium, to Mariene
Beco. J of

Of these ten, the three most celebrated , and the ones we shall chiefly
discuss here, were Gua.dalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima. Of those that failed
to achieve ecclesiastical recognition, the most celebrated was probably
the series of apparitions that began on 3 July I 876, at Marpingen, Ger-
many, to five young girls: Katharina Hubertus and her sister. llschen
Hubertus, Susanna Leist, Margaretha. Kunz, and Anna Meisberger. J S
For our purposes, several features were common to most of these
modern apparition!".. In the course of h is Study of Marpingen, historian
David Blackbourn identified "all the elements of the classic modern
apparition" as they had " fused" at Lourdes: "The Simplicity of the hum-
ble visionary, the delivery of a message, the initial !".cepticism of the parish
priest, the hostile reaction of the civil authorities, claims of miraculous
cures, and fin ally the purposive creation of an official cult by the
church" 16-the last of these having, of course, been absent in the case of
the Marpingen visions of 1876.
It 'A"Ould appear that the vast majority of those to whom the Virgin
appeared during what dese rves to be called the great century of Marian
apparitions-the hundred years from the 1830s to the 1930sl1-were
not members of the elites but laypeople and peasants. 111 This has been
seen as fulfilling her proclamation and prophecy in the Magnificat, "He
hath scan ered the proud in the imagination of their heans. He hath pm
down the mighty from their sealS, and exalted them of low degree. He
hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty
away." 19 That contrasted with many o f the earlier instances in the Middle
Ages, when she manifested herself to religious professionals, and profes-
sional religiOUS (as was alw true, in r..he present lisl, of the apparition to
Sister Catherine Laboure ill I 830); among these, some, such as for exam-
ple Saint Birgina ofSwedell, came from the upper classes. But when, on
13 May 1946, more than 700,000 pilgrims, almosl a tenthofthe popula-
tion ofPonugal, gathered at Fatima in honor of Mary as Queen of Peace to
ISO WO"A~n n Tlnf)" ' T H 1'H"J-'

give thanks to her for the end of the Second World War, it \\a~, a;, It had
been for the thirty ~'ear<. prc(;edlllg in the devotion to thl~ p.trticular
Marian appan\lon, "scrubwomen, waiters, young and old, rich and
poor, all SOrL~ of pi.!ople (but most of them humble, most of them
barefoot, most of them workers and their families)," who paid tribute to
the Virgin. 20 Whether the explanation for this privileging of the poor and
humble was, ...-. CfllICS such as &nile Zola charged,2' the manipulative
power of the church over the invincible ignorance of the unenlightened
mas~e .. , wili(;h would be di .. ~ipatcd when science and s(;hoolillg pre-
vailed, or whether It was, J,S defender~ maintained, the predilection of
the Virgin for those who were like herself. u both the mitial reaction to
the visions and the subsequent I.:om roversy over them sometimes rc-
nected an almo~t textbook case of the "class struggle,·' in the interpreta-
non of whil.:h its mmtlllf\uential ad,·ocate. though anything bUl a prole-
tariaJl himself, took the side of the proletariat even as he S(;orned such
manifestations of lower-class spiritual it y as "the opium of the masses."
The events associated with the appearance of the Virgin at Guadalupe
in 153} attached themselves to tensions that were evidence not only of
class struggle but of racial struggle, as well as of struggle o"er religious
s}'ncretism Il For Juan Diego was an Indian, and those who initially
refused to accept the reliability of his acmunt were Caucasian.H In the
difTererKe of oplllion over Nuestro Senora de Guadalupe. therefore, as one
account inspired by twentieth-I.:erltury Iiheration theology has put it, "it
IS the Indian's work or mission that the white man mmt acknowledge. It
is the Indian 's word that IS at stake, and It IS his miSSion to ~trugglc 10 be
rei:ognized by the whites. In this Struggle the Indian is certalll that he has
absolute backing from the Virgin." lS Examination of the rise of the cult
of the Virgin of Guadalupe by anthropologists has suggested many close
connection~ with the condition of the native Indian population under
Spamsh colonial dornination. l6 She has likewise been ..een as a vindica-
tion not ani}' oflndians' se1f-consciou~ resistance to the transformation
of their homeland into "New Spain" but of "the female ~elf-irnage" in
resistance to the patriarchal dominance repre~ented by the Spanhh con-
quistadores-and by the Spanish rni~sionarics.17 Evidently at work in the
 WO ...."', <;lOlltED wIT" Till Hn.: 181

snuggle was also the identification of the site of the apparition wilh a
native fcmale deilY, whom the Spanish Christian missionaries had sought
to expel but who now seemed to them to mve returned to their Indian
converts in the borrowed guise of the Mother of God.28 Yet even lhat
situation was not without its special ironies. The very name "Gua-
dalupe," now so closely identified with the Indian cause m Mexico that
she has been called, in words quoted earlier, '·the unofficial. the private
flag ofMexicans," 29 was not an Indian word but was of Spanish origin,
having been the name of the MMian shrine in the province ofC.iceres in
Spain long before Juan Diego ever saw Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe; the
continuing prominence of the Virgin in Spain during this period is
documented by her many apparitions there in the Medieval and Early
Modern periods and is well illustrated by Baroque statues ofher.lo But by
her idcntification with the native IX>pul ... tion and with the downtrodden
there ... nd everywhere. Mary the Virgin of Guadalupe became . .iI.S the poet
Oct...v10 Pu has said, '·the mOlher of Mexico, "ll and, as more than one
writer has called her, il "McxJun niltionai symbol. "31 Thus the dual title
o f an exhibit devoted to her, "Mother of God, Mother o f the Amer-
icas, "33 summilTized well the dual role she hilS come to occupy. And in
the poetry devoted to her all these themes hilve heen sounded. H
Sometimes, when the Virglll appeared, she remained Silent, even
enigmatically so. But more usually she communicated a message, first to
the visionanes in their private devotion but then also to the church and
the world. Occ.il.Sionally, as in the celebraled "third message" of the Lady
ofF.itima,]5 that mltssage was conveyed in secret, to be disclosed at some
future time when iI would be needed most; this has generally been
followltd by tantalizing specularions about what the secret message might
contam and when it might become public. The political mcssilges deliv-
ered by the Virgin have drawn by fa r the most attention, both in the
popular press and in the scholarly IiteralUre. Our Lady of Guadalupe. by
the sheer fact of her having singled out illl Indian native rather than a
Spanish conqueror as the object of her ilttentions, became a MeXican
national symhol and has hecome decisive in ·'the formanon of Mexican
national consciousness." 36 But our other prime case studies, Lourdes and
Fauma, as well as Marplngen, also represented the VirgIn's explictt Inler-
vemion into the political affairs of the time with a message. At Lourdes,
therefore. "Mary, refuge of the sick and ~inners, cO\lld alw be Mary the
refuge of Catholk France. In her Immaculate Conception, she van-
qlushed not only Satan hut also his Rcpublkan legions and materialist
idea:>. Queen of heaven, she was also Quccn of Fr.mee. or at least the
symbol of the "true rrance' Yet in her youth and simple clothe$she CQuid
also be idemified with the young. poor, and the humble. Mary was truly a
urllfpng symbol that could help Frencb people overcome their class.
regional, and local dlrrerenc~."37

Similarly. when, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Virgm ':> ap-

pearance at Fatima, Pope Pius XII addressed the Portuguese people in
1942, which in the event turned out to be the midpoint of world War n,
he made a direCi conne<:tion between her appearance in 1917, the nadir
of World War I. and the crisis of their own lime during another world
war: "The greater the mercies for which today you thank Our l.i1dy of
Fatima. the more assured the confidence you place in Her for the future,
the nearer you feel Her to be, protecnng you under Her man tle of light,
the more tragiC appear", by COIllTiiSt. the fate of so m.ny nations torn to
pieces by the greatest coilamity In histOry. .. NO\'i more than ever, only
confidence in God can be of avail; voiced before the Divine Throne, by a
Mediatrix such as She, "J~ But for many who had passed through the fiery
trial of both world wars, including the chun:h that had passed througr.
many wars dUring lIS history, the outcome of Worle! War II was a fiery
uial no less threatening. The domination of Eastern Europe, including nat
only such Eastern Orthodox lands as Ru~sia, Serbia, md Bulgaria but also
such Roman Catholic lands as Poland, Croalia, and Lithuania, by a mili-
tary power and political ideology evcn more hostile to Christianity and all
religion than the French Revolution had been was very much on the
mind of Roman Catholic le.ders. And it wa~ seen as having been o n the
mind of the Lad) of Fatima when she put in her appeara nce III the very
)ear of the Russioin Revolution. When Pope Pml VI came to pay his
devolion to her at Fatima for the fiftieth anlllversary of the apparition in
1967, therefore, he declared: "The whole world is in danger. For thi.~
 WO"'A)I ClOTUlD WITH TH~$U~ 181

reason "'e have come to the feet of the Queen of Peace to ask her for the
gift of God which ~ upposes his interventlon, d ivine, good, merciful and
mysterious." 39
Concentration o n the political messages of the Virgin has, however.
sometimes led secular-minded journalists and historians to a reduction-
ism that ignores the role she has assumed also in the doctrinal develop-
ment of the church 's messa.ge. Above all, she has been seen as intervening
in support of that doctrinal development when the docrrine at issue has
dealt spedfically with her own person. In the neXl two chapters I shall
turn to two of the three most important "new" doctrines to have been
defined by the Roman Catholic church in the entire modern era: the
dogma of the immaculate conception of me Virgin Mary in 1854 and the
dogma of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary in 19 50. (The third
was the dogma of the infallibility of the pope. promulgated by the First
Vatican Council in 1870, at least partly [0 vindicate the action o f Pi us IX in
1854.) It wa.s espeCially to reinforce the first o f these that the Virgin
appeared only a few years laler at Lou rdes; for the myStenous Lady saId to
Bernadette Soubiroux (in her own native dialect): '" am the Immaculate
Conception ."
In the light of the conservatism of both the political and the religiOUS
messages that the Virgin has conveyed when she appeared, it may seem
surprising that the official reaction at all levels has nOl been instandy
enthusiastic_ In facl. the chllrch has at all levels proceeded with great
caution in dealing with such phenomena. developing over the years a set
of doctrinal and pastoral criteria for distinguishing the genuine from the
illusory:'O What Blackbourn idenufies as '-the initial scepticism of the
parish priest [andJ the hostile reaction of the civil authorities " 41 has been
a commonplace of the apparition narratives. " 2 Particularly Impressive in
one account of Marian appar itions afler anOlher. including both that of
Juan Diego and that of Bernadene, has been the pcrsL~tently neg.Hive
reaction attributed to the local pari~h priest and to local magistrates.
Such reactions from the clergy and local authorities beLOken the
profound ambiguity of the very phenomenon of the Marian apparition as
a two-edged sword. For it did serve as a weapon in the sometimes
rearguiHd b,)lIle of the church again'>! it~ modern enemIes The f<rance of
Volt,)tre and Dieit:rot Ill,)} have been ~een b} all sides at the end of the
eighteenth century as the sel'dbcd of rationah"m and lht" \tronghold of
atheism; but It was to rationalbtic. atheistic France that the Vi rgl n repeat-
edly granted her presence during Ihe following century, to SiMer Cather-
ine Labourt': on 17 November 1830 111 Pam. to Maximin Giraud and
Mdanie Mathieu on 19 Septenlber 1846 In La Sa.lelle, and above all to
Bernadene Soubiroux on I I February- I 6 July 1858 in lourdes There is
good reason to believe that neither the IntclleclUal defense of Christian
revelation by the apologetio:; enterprise in nineteemh-cct1\ury Roman
Catholic theology. including the revi val of Thomistic phllmophlcal apol-
ogetics. nor the political defense of the in ... titutional church and its pre ,
rogatives against the annclericaJism of that time wa~ as dTec(lve a cam-
paign, particularly among the common people. as the one thatlhe Virgin
Mary waged For it has been well said that "Rome is !lle head of the
Church but Lourdes i~ its heart. "H But therein also lay much of lhe
ambiguity of the Marian apparition\ The authority of the parish priest in
the confe!'.~ional and t,'ven the wletntllly of hIS cclebration of the Mas.<;
before tbe local altar '>eemed to pale into insignificance when compared
with the dramatic appeal of a personal appearance by none l~ than the
Mother of God and her continued activit}' In the grotto at Lourdes_ As in
the period of the Reformation the peddling of papal indulgences by
itinerant prea(;her~ threatened 10 undercut Ihe administration of the sac'
rament of penance .11 the parish level. so a struggling parish pastor in
nineteenth-century France could well resellt the interference III his min-
istry by the "delusions" of these children thaI they had \Ighted the
Blessed Virgill_
For many of the Marian shrines called illLo being by the apparitiolls,
the most prominent dimension has been the miraculous, together with
the mass mo\'ement of pilgrims who have heen attracted primarily by the
miraculous elemelll In the first instance, that miraculom quality applied
to the \l~iom, themselves, whkh were attributable onl} to a capacity that
exceeded norma! ~ight. whether the root cause was 10 be a"ulbcd to
\u pernanlfaI (orce.. or to neurosis. An apparition of Mary or of Christ was
 WOM" ~ C LOT Hf D W I1 H THE IU" US

in its own right a transcendent evftnt, whose credibility would usually

seem to depend all the prior credibility of miracles of any kmd. Con-
versely, once accepted or "verified" (whatever that process of verification
may have entailed), its miraculous power extended itself La the person
of the visionaries or to the site of tlle vision or to some physical feature of
the site even when, as in the case of the wonder-working water of
Lourdes, il has been carried far away from the onginal venue of the
apparition. Always, however, at least in theory, the mi racles and the credit
for them still belonged to the person of the Virgin, not to some magic
thought 10 he intrinsic to the piKes or inherent in the things that she had
lOuched and transformed by her presence. The frequently noted reversal
over time ill the role of miracles-from the ancient view of hath pagans
and Christians that miracles were actions that provftd the authority of the
miracle worker 1O the modern view of the Enlightenment that purported
mi racles depended for any credibility they might have on the already
acr.:cpted authority of the holy person-does not completely apply here:
for the miracles of Lourdes or Fatima bave functioned bOlh ways.
The statistics of miraculous cures, particularly in the case of Lourdes,
have been variously perceived:H It has sometimes been estimated,
whelher accurately or not, that Lourdes has, in something less than a
celllury and a half. attracted twice as many pilgrims a~ has Mecca in more
than thirteen cemuries."'s Undoubtedly some of those who have come
were ~ightseers or curiosity-seekers, and many other~ came only LO pray.
But tens of thousands. a.nd perhaps millions, have made the pligrimage to
Lomdes to seek a miraculous cure for ills of body and spirit. The miracu-
lous powers of the Virgin of Lourdes and the Virgin of Fatima have
rer.:eived certification at the highesllcvel of authorilY. The elllire civilized
world, Roman Calholicor not, was shocked when Pope John Paull! was
shot and gravely wounded In Sailll Peter's Square on i3 May 198 J and
gratified when he survived. The pope himselfleft no doubt regarding his
view of how and why he was spared: "And again r have become indebted
to the Blessed Virgin ... . Could I forget that the event ill Saint Peter's
Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of
the Mother of Christ to the poor hulc peasants has been remembered for
,. .....ITIl Ill. ,-.;

u\er ~I ... ty year..11 F.ilLma in Pormgal 1 Thai cia)' . _ I felt Ihal eXlraordln-
aT:, motherly protection, which turned out to be slronger than Ihe deadly
bullet. "46 Pius XII on the twenty-fifth anni\'CrsilfY. Paul VI by lll~ visit to
the shrine on the fiftieth anniversary, and John Paul [I after the dllcmplcd
assa,~1 nation-ail three called special attention to OUf L!.dy of Fatima, as
they and other twentieth-century po~ also lent their authority to the
cult or OUT Lady of Lourdes.
For the counterpart 10 the "initial sceptici<,m" of which BlacklxHlrn
speaks as a characteristic of the history of Marian appari tions has been
what he goes on to call" the purpo~ivc cr<:ation of all official cult by the
,
church," of which Lourdes is for him the outstanding mstance (and
Marpillgen an out~tandtng exception) .'t7 Because, as B.lrbara Pope has
~aid, "Rome had an interest in shoring tip tradi£ional faith within the
COUlitry that it constdered to be the seedhed of modern revolutions
the combined motives of faith and politi<.:al sensitivity mo'cd the papacy
to confirm the French Catholics' hehef LIm they had been dlOscn by
Mary. "'i8 As that description implies, the belief of Fn.:nch Cadl0lics in the
app<lrition and In the ir having been "chosen by Mary" look hold first on
the local, regional, and national levels, from which it went on to gain
papal approbation Similarly, it W<lS the action of the "ordinary," the
rcsponsible bishup oflelfia, in 1930, "( 1) tu declare worthy uf tTedence
the visiuns of the shepherds at the Cova da Iria, in the parish of Fatima of
this diocese, on the 13th day oflhe months from May tu Octohcr 1917
and (2) to give official permission for the cult ofOu! lady ufFanma "~ ..

Far from heing imposed on a reluctant laLl}" hy Oln authoritarian regime.

as hostile interpreters assumed, belief to Marian appanllons has, as orten
as not. been Imposed from below on the ecclesiastical authorities by
what is in some sense a democratic proce% As John Henry Newman
once described the pfO(ess, speaking not about the doctrine of Mary in
the nineteenth century but about the dOCt rine of the Trinit) III the fourth.
it was ''lhc orthodoxy orthe faithful" that prevailed over the !.pcwlations
of the theologIans. so More realistically (or more C)'nicall)'). the granting
of ecclesiastical approbation and the systematic encouragement of an
official cult may be ~een a\ the effort to rc~train in the lcgion~ of Ihe
 WO)o(AN C~OTH'D Wnlt TH~ SUN 187

Mar ian faithful the excesses to which Marian devolion has been espe-
cially subject. Indeed, as one scholar Judges, "Lourdes, because of its
careful guardianshi p by lhe Church since its inception, is perhaps the
most tightly controlled and orchestrated, at the levels of both meaning
and practice of all the pilgrimage culLS," 51 although it needs to be added
that in al least some respects both Guadalupe and Ei.tima do not seem to
h ave lagged far behind. It does seem safe lO say that for many millions of
people no form o f Marian devotion or doctrine has carried more mo-
memou." slgnificanL'e than her miraculous apparitions.
DIego \'~!~l.qllel. Tbt Vugm of 1M Jm""""J.l< C""'<r"m, c I bi B '1.,;on~1 G~!le<). London
 14 The Great Exception,
Immaculately Conceived

&bold, I was mapa! in jm~lIily.

lind ill sin did my mOlher COfIC(i~t me.
-Psalms 51:5

s we have seen in the early chapters of this book. much of the

venue for the developmem of both devotion and doctrine connected to
the Virgin Mary was the Christian East-$yriac, Coptic, Armenian, and
Greek-rather than the Latin West. to which the results came from the
East. To be sure, that wa~ abo true of other doctrines, such as the doctrine
of the perwn of Christ, though it .......5 not by any means true of alJ of
them. To the doctrine of the Trinity. for example, Latin writers such as
Tertullian in North Africa made substantial contributions, including the
word trinit4s; and at the Coundl of Nicaea in 325, a Western bishop.
Ossiw; of Cordova, nOL only presided over the council but was a principaJ
theological adviser to the emperor Constantine and. it seems. the source
of the formula adopted by the council. that the Son of God was "one in
being [homoousiosJ WiLh the Father." But even that formula. with its origins
in earlier heresies. was in Greek. and so were such formulas for Mary a~
Theotokos.
One is~ue in the historical development of the doctrine of Mary,
however. was in great mea~ure r.:onfined to the Latin West: the dogma of
the immaculate wllcepLion. i The reason was the form that the doctrine

".
of origmal sin had taken in the West, which was itself closely tied to the
interpretation of Mary I The assertion of the virgin birth o f Jesus Christ-
or, more precisely, of his virginal conception-originated in the New
Testament, being found III the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but nowhere
else,J In the first of these, as Krister Stendahl has put it, "the Virgin Birth
~tory is theologically mute, no christological argument or insight i~

deduced from this great divine illlervemion, "4 The narrative in Luke was
somewhat more specific in identifying the significance of the interven-
tion, for the ~ngel s~id to M~r}' : "The Holy Ghost sh~1l come upon thee,
and the power of the Highes,t shall overshadow thee: thffefoff also that holy
thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son ofGod," s The
word "therefore [dioli]" indicated UIat "the inference b sc\f-cvid(,nt"6
and thus that the holiness and the divine sonship of the child had some
connection, perhap~ even a causal one, with the ~pccial circumstances of
his conception: but it fell far short of specifying just what that connection
might be.
As noted earlier, Ambrose of Milan , who in turn became the memor
of Augustine on these matters, was probably responsible for the definitive
establ ishment o f a fi rm "causal connection between the virginal concep-
tion and the sinlessness of Christ .. " the combination of the ideas of the
propagation of original sin through sexual union and of the sinlesSlless of
Christ as a consequence of his virginal conception."7 To be free from sin,
Christ had to be free from the normal mode of conception; this was the
cOllchlsion Ambrose seemed to draw from the words of the prophet:
"Who will tell the story of [enarrabit] his having been begotten [genero -
tionemJ 7"8 As he continued the argument, his chief proof text was likewise
from the Old Testament: "Behold, [was shapen in iniquity: and ill sin did
m} mother concei ve me."9 According to the superscription of the psalm,
these words were spoken by "David. when Nathan the prophet came
unto him, after he had gone ill to Bathsheba." As Ambrose put it, David
"was reg~rded ~s righteous beyond others," rfChrist was to be called
truly righteous, it had to be "for no other reason than that. a~ one who
was born of a virgin, he was not bound in allY way by the ordinances
against a guilty mode of having been begottell."' IO Therefore Ambrose
 lHf GklAT £XCHTIO" 191

summarized the rclation between original sin and the virgin hirth of
Christ this way: "Even though he a...sumed the natural substance of this
very flesh, he was not conceived in iniquity nor born in sin-he who was
not born of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of a man, but
of the Holy Spirit from a virgin."ll (It hears noting in those word.. that
Ambrose was quoting the LaLin variant noted earlier, by which the words
of John I: 13 were taken in the singular and applied to the birth of
Christ.) lZ This doctrine of original sin was established in Western teach·
ing through the thought of Augustine of Hippo, which in turn made
necessary a special treatment of the place of Mary in the schema of sin and
salvation. l l
For where did that leave the Virgin? She had conceived without sin,
but how had she in turn heal conceived? In a famous and controversial
passage of On Nature IlIId Gmu, one of the most important treatises that he
devoted to the defense of the dlXtrine of original sin, Augustine h ad
listed the great saints of the Old and New Testamen tS, who had neverthe-
less been sinners. Then he continued: "We must make an exception of the
holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it
touche~ the subjeu of sins, out of honor to the Lord. For from him we
Know what abundance of grace for overcoming sin in every particular [ad
\incaxlllm !JIMi ~ !'One pt.lcarum] wa.~ conferred upon her who had the merit
to conceive and bear him who undoubtedly had no 5in."11 When he
made such a statement, Augustine was being more faithful to the Greek
tradition III his doctrine of Mary than he was in his doctrine of human
nature. As sugge~ted in chapter 6, the East and the West LOok significantly
divergent d irections III their handling of the distinction between nature
and grace-perhaps more divergent from each other than were, for
example, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. In spite of these differe nces
belv..-een Augustine's theory of original .~lll and the definitions of ·'ances-
tral sin fpropdtrikon hamnrtanaJ"' in the Greek fathers, however, they were
agreed about the Theotokos, as this quotation from On Naturt and Grace
indicated, But Augustine did not explain this great exception, leaving It to
the doctrinal development of the West over the next fourteen centuries to
clarify it.
 One of the earlle~t and 1Il0.,t importantthlllkers in the UIlIl Wel'>t to
mO\e that development along was il III nth ·u'rlIur}' Bcnl-diclllle mOllk at
Corhie, Pa.s(ha~im Radbcrtus. 1 ~ He i~ be~t remembered fur having raised
the doctrine of the real present:e orthe body and blood of Christ In the
Eucharist to a new le\'el of discussion and for having in significant ways
allticipatcd tht· form that the doctrine was e\·clltually to take with the
adoption of the cOllcept of transubMalltiation at Ihe Fourth Lateran Coun-
cil ill 121 S. But Radbenus was at the ~me lime a pioneer in Marian
doctrine. with a treatise on how Mary gal'e birth . Radbertus is aL~o, by
almost universal comen!. regarded a~ the al.uhor of a. tft.'allse e!Hllled
CogiliS me ("You compel me"). which \\a~, however, wntten under the
name of Jerome. who had lived more than four centuries earlier, Cogltis mf
was devoted to the question of whethcr It was appropri<llc 10 cclebrate a
fesllval commemorating Ihe nati\·lIY of the Vlrglll Mary, llOI the da}' of
her death, or .. dOTllU\IOTl," 16 which could be celebrated a~ the Victorious
climax of her life, but the day of her phy~ical birth. inevit<lbly, a comider-
ation of that q ueS(lon rabed the question not only of her birth but of her
conception, specifically whether. like the resl of humanll y. ~he had been
concei\'ed and born in original sin or whether she descn·ed 10 be re-
garded as anOlher ,. great exception" to that universal rule. her Son, Jesus
Chri~t, having been the primary exceJlllon The treatise of Radhertus
raised the qlle~tiOn but left it unsettled.
During the High Middle Ages no one spoke more articulalely or
eloquently about Mary than one of lhe great preachers of ChTl~tian
history. Bernard of Clain-aux 11 As mentioned earlier. Dante put his
prai~eof the Virglll at the conclusion of the Dil·ine Comoly into the mouth
of Bernard and in ~() doing quoted eXleml\'c1y from his wTitings, 18 BUI
when it came to thi~ qucstion of what is being called here '·the great
exceptioll." Bernard wa~ adamant. 111 his famous Epislir J 74, addre~sed to
the canons of the cathedral ofL}om, he l!1\i\led: "if it is appropriate to
~ay what the elmr!.h bellevcs and if what ~he behc\·e.., i.., true. then I say
that lhe gloriOUS lVirginl conceived b} the Holy Spirit, but \\a\ not also
herself conceived thi~ way. I say that ~he gave birth as a virgIn. bUI not that
she was born ofa virglll, For otherwi<;e what would be the prerogative of
 T H' GHAT lXn>TIOh' 193

the Mother of God?" 19 It was widely believed that the "special novelty of
grace" by which Mary had given birth to Christ did not affect in any way
the manner by which she herself had been born, which did not differ
from the usual method of conception and binh, Yet, the virgin birth of
Christ from one who had herself been conceived and born in sin did not
seem to resolve the question of how he could be ~inless in hi~ birth if his
mother wa.~ not. Sometimes, in the eyes of its critics and even of its
supp0rlers, such argumentation seemed to lead to the notion of an
infinite regre~~ of sinless ancestors, going back presumably to Adam and
Eve, all of whom had been preserved free from sin in order to guarantee
the sinlessness of Chnst and o f Mary. A cenain kind of "superfluous
curiosity" could then begin to inquire into Mary's parentage as a meam
of explaining how she had given birth through how she hersclfhad been
born. For if, as was by now universally assumed. Augustine's doctrine
was correct in declaring those who were conceived and born in the usual
way were infected by original sin. then Mary mUM have been unique in
some way. It remained to be determined "how it was that the Virgin was
purified before the conception " of Christ; this could not have been
"otherwise than by him" to whom she gave birth, because he was pure
and she was not. There was unanimity that Mary had been saved by
Christ, so that, although she lamented his death because be was her Son,
she welcomed it because he was her Savior, ?O A feast devoted to the
commemoration ofber conception or nativity, which was adopted from
time to time in one place or another. therefore, was not appropriate,
because it was not how she had lx.'Cn conceived but how she herself had
COllceived that set her apart. But Bernard also added the important stipu-
lation that he was prepared to defer to the judgment of Rome on the
entire question, both of the doctrine of the immaculate conception iL"elf
and of the commemoration of a feast of me nuivity of Mary.
The iconographic tradition, like the theological one, had had a twO-
fold development, with the two parts not dearly harmonized, One wa~
the pauern of empha.'\i2.ing the humanity of the Virgin, therefore also her
relation to her parents, Anna and Joachim. Various paintings and panels
devoted to "the childhood of the Vi rgin" repre~ented the legends about
her life, ~ndesrN.lall} ahout hcrearl) hfe, that h~d bL'('n growing. such as
her early vow o f chaMlty_ l' The almost n.uuralistic depiuton of her
childhood W~~ evident in Peter Paul Rtlbcns"s Anna Teachmg Mar),. which
wuld be taken 10 he the piclllf(' of a nf)rlll~l bourgeois family. with the
mother tcaching and the daughter lcarnillg. But as It has done with the doc-
trine of Mary throughout history, Christian art often ;lIltic.:ipatcd the de-
n~ lopment of dogma, whICh eventually <;aught up with Lhe lconograph}.
In a vilriety ofartistic form~. the immaculate conccpllon WolS shown both
directly and indirectly', and an elahorate schema of ~ymbo!s was created
for It.n Several ortho~e symbols. nota!>l) the moon a~ a ~yl1lhol for the
IIlHllaculatc conception of tlte Virgin. have been wovcn into the e<HI}'
painting of Diego Velazquez, Tnt Virgin of tnt immacu/att COIlCtpliOn Although
various commentalOl1o on this panuing havc commented on lhe absence
of ideilli.t.illlon in II. they have also noted Its dram~tic usc o f light as an
expression ufthe 1l1)sterr in this "great exception."
As the controveny over the immaculate conception developed al-
ready in Ihe thirteenth and fourteenth CenturIes, Bit bec.:ame custom~ry
to put into juxtaposition these two passages from te,)clters of massive
authonty in the Latin West: Augusnne \ Idelllifie<uion of Mar}' ,)s in some
war or other an "exception," and Bernard'" Eplslle 174 to the c')nons of
LrollS, opposing the ITnmaculate conception. When they were lined up
that way, depending on the viewpollll. the author would proccc.:d to
explain oTie o( tltem on the basi., of the other. Gregorr of Rimini, citing
other passages (rom Augustine thai made Christ the (111)' exception to
the uni~crsalily of original sin, expl.uned !lUI in Ihe passage under dis-
CUssion he must ha\"e been rerl·rring only to actual sin, frolll which
cveryone, includmg Bernard. agreed that Mary was free. But this expla-
nation could not samfy those who illlerprcled Augustine's phrase "over-
coming sin in evcry particular [aJ ;'inctndum omni e.~ paItf pt'CCOlUm]"' as
cOII,prehending hoth actual and origin~J ~in. so that she alone among all
the saints did nO! have 10 pray the \\'ord~ of the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us
our debts."
The controver.,ial IClter of Bernard was all the mort' troublesome
bcca.u\e of hh standing as "bearer of the name'· for the Virgin. For
 lIH GOl~T HClrl1 0N 195

example. all bm one of the &rmons 011 the Ftstll'llis of the Glorious Viljjill Mory of
Gabriel Biel. a vigorous Franciscan supporter of the immaculate concep~
tion. included at least one quot.1tion from Bernard . just as his exposition
of the doxology to Mary in the Mass quoted Bernard in every paragraph:
and it was to Bernard that he turned for the doctrine of her position as
Mediatrix. In the face of such eminent authority.... head ~on refutation of
Bernard's leiter. point by point. was a d lfficultt<K1.ic. but some ventured
to undertake it. O thers found an extenuation in the large number of
Patristic and Medieval doctors who had shared Bernard's ideas-they
were certainly in the majority over those who had taught something like
the theory of the immaculate conception-or they argued thal both of
the conditions stipulated by Bernard for accepting the doctrine (a feast of
Mary's conception as an official day of the church ye.tr. and a pronoum;e~
ment by the see of Rome on the doctrine) had now been fulfilled . There
arose a legend not long after his death thaI Bernard had a black mark
placed on his breast by God as punishment for "writing what ought not
to be written about the conception of Our Lady" and that he was under-
going the cleansing punishments of purgatory for this. The legend was
even used to discredit his doctrine o f Mary generally, although that did
seem to be going too far.
The most formidable ilfgument that Bernard of C1airvaux and then
Thomas Aquinas. as well as their later followe rs. had directed against the
immaculate conception of Mary was the charge that if she had been
conceived withom original sm, she did nOt need redemption- which
wou ld detran from "the dignity ofCbrist as the Universal Savior of all." If
Chnst died for those who were dead. then his haVing died for the Virgin
necessarily implied that she. too. had been dead in original sin. On the
basis especially of the verse quoted earlier. "Behold , I was shapen in
iniquity: and in sin did my mother conceive me. "H Augustine had
declared the universal need of humanity for the redemption wrought by
Christ. If Mary was to be Included as part of humanity. albeit a very special
pan. did that universal statementapply to her. and ifnot. wh}' not? To this
specific objection it was possible La reply that she was exempt from other
universal statements of Scripture. sllch as "All men arc liars." H
 But the fundamellIal repl)' to this enure line of reihoning wa~, a~
Helko Oberman has put it, "the gre~[ invention ofScolm, lwhoJ wa, 10
use this precise argument to ddtnd the dourine ullder discmsiOIl"If,
This was a speculative tour de force with fe\\ if any equals for sheer
brilhance ill lhe hl~tory of Chrisl1an thought. 21 Duns SCOluS considered
the question of Mary on the basis of a theological method that ha~ been
called "lllaxllllaIL~m , " It was, he .').aid, po.\>.\>ible for God (1) to preserve
her from origmal Sill or (2) to re,cue her fmm it witlun an instant of
her conception (as Thoma~ Aquinas taught), so that, though concei\'ed
in sin, she was born pure of sin, or (3) to purify her of it at the end of a
period of lime, "Which of these tllree it was that was done," he
continued, "God knows," because neither Scripture nor tradition had
spoken unequivocally about II "But, " he went Oil, "if it does not
colltradict tlle authority of Scripture or the authority of the church, il
seems preferable to attribute greater rather than le~r excellence 10
Mary," Or, as a later thinker put it, "r would rather err on the side of
superabundance by attributing some prerogative to her than on the ~ide

of inadequiiC)' by taking away from her some excellence that she had"
better to believe and teach toO much than tOO Imle, Another component
of thi~ method wa~ the oft-repeated formula: "Whatever was both
possiblt: and eminently fining for God to do, that he did [potuU, d«uit,
fecitl" The defender~ of the formula conceded that It ~eemed to be
indispensable to the doctrine of the immaculate conception, and its
critics objected that the issue was "not whether it was possible for her
to be conceived without (original] sin, but whether in faCl she was
wnceived without it." On the basis precbcly of "the excellence of her
Son as Redeemer," Scotus insi~ted that the most perfect of Redeemers
must have had "the most perfect possible degree of mediation \\ IIh
respect 10 OIK creature" and that the most fitting candidate for tillS honor
obViously enough, his mother, The most perfect method of re-
WilS,

demp",ol1, moreover, was to preserve her from original ~in rather than
to resclle her from it , As. in the case of others "the rescuing grace of
redempllon does away with origillal sin," so 111 the case of Mary "prcstr'l'-
ina Brace does not do away with anginal sin, bllt prevent, [ltl"Z~ In this
 T~l G " H T f XC £ Pl I O S 197

sense it was even possible for Scotu~ to as~crl that "Mary needed Christ
as Redeemer more than anyone did," for she needed the suffering of
Christ, "not on account of dIe sin that was present in her, but on
account of the sin that would have been present if that very Son of hers
had not preserved her through faith," She was immaculately conceived
because what nature had not given to her, the special grace of God had
accomplished in her. 1n spite of the counterargument that then the most
perfect method of all would have been to preserve everyone from
original sin, it was in her case alone that this method of redemption -by -
preservation was adjudged "the most fitting," and therefore her "resto-
ration was not an act of supplying what had been lost, but an act of
increasing what [she] already had."
Contributing to the eventual resolution of the issue and of the
controversy was the belief that a basic reason for the difference between
Mary and all of humanity was that there was never any actual sin in
h,,-an exemption from the universal rule that everyone had to grant,
regardless of views about whether she had been conceived in original
sin. The paradox of that exemption evoked from Pierre D' Al11y such an
affirmation as this, addressed to Mary: "It was not by thy righteousness,
but by divine grace that thou didst merit to be the only one without the
woe of venial and mortal guilt. and, as is devoutly believed, without the
woe of original guilt as well." His disciple Jean Gerson took the affirma-
tion the rest of the way, paraphrasing dIe Apostles' Creed in Middle
French: "[ believe that in the sacrament of baptism God grants, to every
creature who is worthy of receiving it, pardon from original sin, in
which every person born of a mother has been conceived, with the sole
exceptions of our Savior Jesus Christ and his glorious Virgin Mother."
This was not, he explained in response to the standard objection, tanta-
mount to putting her on dIe same level as Christ. In the case of Christ
sinlessness was "by right," in the case of Mary it was "by priVilege."
,'\nother paradox, and one that Bernard had already noted, appeared in
the Gospel account of the annunciation, in which the angel had saluted
Mary as "full of grace [gratia plena, in the Latin)" and thus presumably
not in need of further grace, but then had gone on to explain to her,
"The Holy Sptrlt ~h a!l come upon thee," the Holy Ghost bcmg the
divine agent of sanctifring grace,l'> It could well be asked whether the
Virglll reqmred S<lnclificallon or, more precl~ely, when she had received
it. Sometimes the rlOClTlne of the immaculate concepllon could, and
did, lead to ~Udl "superfluous" extreme~ as the theory that from the
beginning of creation God had !.et aside a special portion of "prime
matter" that was prcdestmed to be eventually present in Mary at lhe
time of the conception of the flc!)h of Chrht, or the theory that Mary,
being free of original sin, was also free of all its possible consequences,
ll1c1uding physical weariness. Even some who fa\'ored the doctrine
warned that there were certain gifts and privileges, as for example a
total knowledge of the futu re, that Christ could have given h iS mother
but did not. Nevertheless, the method prevailed, and by the sixteenth
century even the heirs of Thomas Aquinas were using it to substantiate
Ihe immaculate conception.
The thirty - ~ixth se~sion of lhe Council of Basel. on 18 December
1439, decreed that the immaculate conception was "a pious doctrine,
111 conformil y with lhe wor.;,hip of the church, the Catholic faith, fight

reason, md Holy Scripture" It prescribed tIm the doctrine "be ap-

proved, held, and professed by all Catholics," and it forbade any
preachmg or teaching COntrary to II. That Inlght have !>t'emed to setde
the matter, and was probably intended to do jllst that-except lhat by
the time of this seSSion Basel was itself under a cloud because of its
stalemems and act i oIL~ on the relation of the authonty of the pope to
that of a general council. which were subsequently condemned and
which therefore made these later ~essions of the Council o f Rasel invalid
and nO! enUlled to lhe designation of "~umenical counciL" Therefore
the decree on the immaculate conception was not canolllcally binding.
Nevertheless, defenders of the lmmaculate conception in the fifteenth
century used IhlS decree to assert lhat although there may ha\'e been an
earlier time when it was permissihle to question the Immaculate con-
ception, the (hurch had now spoken out definitively on the question,
and It was "fooli!>h and impudent" to continue 10 oppose it. By Ihe end
of the {jfteemh century, with or without the authority of the Council of
 THE C~UT HClHION ]99

Basel, the doctrine had become generally accepted in Western Ch ri~ten­

dom, believed by the faithful and taught by the doctors of the church.
At the CawIci! ofTrem, which was held from 1545 to 1563 at least
partly in response to the attacks of the Protestant Reformation on Catho-
lic doctrine, including the doctrine of the immaculate conception as
well as other supposedly postbiblical doctrines about Mary, me exten-
sive debates over original sin led to a consideration of the immaculate
conception as an unavoidable implication. 30 When one of the draft
decrees for the seventh session of the CowIcil of Trem spoke of original
sin as transmitted "to th e entire human race in accordance with its
universal law," the implications of this statement for the doctrine of
Mary led to its deletion and, evelllllally at the fourteenth session, to a
new paragraph 011 the end of me decree, specifying that it was not the
council's inlention 10 include Mary in ilS asserlion of the uni\'ersality of
original sin and citing the constitutions on the Virgin promulgated by
Pope Sixtus IV in 1477 and 1483 but still stopping short of defining the
immaculate conception as a dogma binding, as an article of faith, on
the entire church . That would not come unlil 8 December 1854, with
the bull rne/fabilis Dtus o f Pope Pius rx, which declared: "The docuine
which holds that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all
stain of o riginal sin in the first instant of her conception, by a Singular
grace and privilege of Almighty God, in consideration of the merits of
Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, has been revealed by God and
mUSt, therefore, firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful. "32
And less than four years later, on 25 March 1858, at the French village
of Lourdes in the Pyrenees, a "lovely lady" appeared to the peasant girl,
Bernadette Soubiroux, and a.nnounced, in the v\!rnacular dialect: "I am
the Immacula.te Conception. "31
The specific content of the promulgation of the dogma of the
immaculate conception by Pius IX evoked controversy and polemics
from both Eastern Orthodoxy and Western PrOtestantism; for as Marina
Warner h as said, "Although the Greeks led the way to tbe doctrine of
the Immaculate Virgin by their cult of her miraculous birth, they op-
posed veneralion of her as anything but the mother of the Redeemer,
10(1 ' >If Q u~r f~( "T[O~

and were followed III lhis belief by the Reformed Churchcs."H But the
doctrine of Mary wa~ HI some way~ overshadowed by the procedural
and Juridical q uel>tion of Ih~ authority of the pope 011 his own to define
a dogma for the ('ntire church. lhe doctrine of papal infa.]]i bility, whl(;h
so domma.ted the a.genda. of the First Vatican Counci l lll 1869-70 that
further ela.horation of the doctrine of Mary was largely deferred It was
a fa!,cinating Iron) in the hi~toq· of \Vest('rn thought. therefore, that
much of tilt, Weight of authority for the Augustinian doctrine of ongi-
lIal sin had COme from the teaching a.bout the "privilege" of Mary b)'
which jCl>US Chn~t had been horn of a Vuglll and therefore was free of
original sin, but that this vcry teaching about her "privilege" went on
in bter centuri<:s to make it necessary for Augustine's \Vestern hcir~ to
develop an c!a.horat<: explanation of her "privilege" of being holy ill a
special sense. And once again, the doctrine of Mary proved to be one of
the mOst importJllt places to observe and test the processes by which
great idcil.'i 11avc dcveinpcd.
15 The Queen of Heaven, Her Dormition
and Her Assumption

Death is swallowed up in victory.

-Isaiah 25:8, I Corinthians 15:54

hroughout this book, in discussing the themes;md dot"trines deal~

ing with the Virgin Mary I have deliberately eschewed the many debates
about her. cultural as well as theological. that have broken out during
the twentieth century. J Rather, 1 merely mentioned them brieRy in the
Introdut:tion. as a fOil for the review that followed, which dealt only
with the earlier centuries; or in some cases 1 have mentioned them only
in order to lake the account of an earlier development into its sub-
sequent st.ages. 2 Nevertheless. one evelll ill the history of Mary at lhe
precise middle of the twentieth century. together with its aftermath,
demands inclusion as the final-or, at any rate, the most re<:ent-stage in
til;!. t history: the issuance. o n I November 1950. o f the papal bull Mumfi-
cmtlssimus Deu~.l In this solemn prodamation. which presumably carried
the stamp of the papal infallibility decreed by the First Vatican Counci!,
the belief in the bodily assumption of the Virgm Mary. long held to be
true both among the faithful and by theologians, wa.~ promulgated as a
dogma of the Roman Catholic (hurch by Pope Pius XII : "that the im-
maculate Mother orCod, Mary St:mpu Virgo. when the course of her earthly

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'"'
20 4 Q 'HEr< Of KHH.~

life was rUIl. wa~ as\umed in body and soul to heavenly glory."'! Tlm'i it
became obligatory in 1950 for Rom~n Catholics to bclieveand teach th~t,
as the Spanish Marian mystic Sister Maria de Jesus de Agn.:da had said in
her life of tn r Vi'!jin Mory already in 1670, Mary "was elevated to the right
hand of her Son and the true God, and situated at the same royal throne of
the Most Blessed Trinity, whither neither men nor angels nor seraphs have
before attained, nor will ever attain for all eternity. This is the highest and
the most excellent privilege of our Queen and Lady: to he at the same
throne as the divine Persons and to luve a place in it, as Empress, when all
the rest of humanity are only ~ervallTs or min i,ters of the supreme Ki nK" $
Not at all surprisingly, the i~suance of MunificelltissimU5 Deus caused an
uproar among Protestant theologians and clergy, both over its doctrinal
content and over its dogmatic authorit y 6 It was seen as sharply and
confrolllationally divisive, and all the more tragic because it came just
when the painfully slow deepening of eC\lmenical awareness had begun
to show sign~ ofheahng the ancient conflicts between the Ea~tern and the
Western churches and even between Protestantism and Roman Catholi-
cism. On the authority of Scriprure and the doctrine of justification by
faith, the \I.\,{) central doctrinal issues of the Reformation - ccntral
enough to have been identified dming the nineteenth century as, respec-
tively, the "formal principle" and the "material principlc" of Reforma-
tion Protestantism - the Roman Catholic and the Protestant positiOns
[lad been conyerging over a period of time. Roman Catholic theologians
were increasingly emphasizing, significantly more than many of their
sixteenth-century prcdece~ors had in the polemical atmosphere of the
Reformation and the Counter-Reformatibn, that the authority of Scrip-
rure, and in the original languages, established the legitimacy of a Chris-
tian doctrine (sola Scriptum, at least in some sense), eyen as Protestant
theologians were paying more respect than they once did to the claims of
tradition and to thl:' role that tradition had played in the formation of
Scripture. Similarly, lhe primKY of the initiative taken by the divine gift
of grKe (sola gratia) and the centrality o f Justifying faith (sola fide, once
more only in some sense) had become a standard concern of Roman
Catholic theology, just as the inseparability of good \'lorks from justifymg
 Ql.I!BI 0> HI' AVIS 20S

faith was occupying a more central position in Protestant teaching. Al-

most as if to find new reasons to perpetuate me .sch ism now that some of
the;e earlier poillLS of disagreement had at least begun 10 yield on both
sides of the conRict, the Marian doctflnes of the immaculate conception
in 1854 and me as~ump l ion in 1950 came along to coumer this trend.
Even a well-disposed Protestant response felt constril.ined to warn in
1950: "While today the majority of churches wlth tears ofpenilence
confess before God that they share in the guilt of a divided Body of Christ,
and in common prayer and serious scholarly effort seek La diminish the
area of disagreement and increase the area of agreement .. , the Roman
Church would increase the area of disagreement by a dogma of the
Assumption. Creation of a dogma of the Assumption would be inter-
preted today in the midst of the effons at closer relationships between the
churches as a fundamental veto on the part oflhe Roman Church."] For
the New Testament and the early centuries of the church had been silent
about "when [and how] the course of her earthly life was run," so this
argument ran. although many traditions and various pious opinions
about it had sprung up in subsequent centuries,8 But \0 tolke these tradi-
tions and opinions and now to elevate them to the status of an official
doctrine. hinding on the ent ire church dt tide and laying claim to the same
authority as the doctrine of the Trinity, ~eemed to he completely pre-
sumptuou~ and utterly without biblical warrant.
By contrast with that reaction, the influen tial twentieth-cenrury psy-
chologist Carl Gustav lung addressed the significance of Mary in a sUiking
and controversial book originally published in German in I 952. entitl ed
Answtr to Job [Antwort auf Hiob].9 The yeu of its o riginal publication is
relevant, for the book contained lung's response 10 the hull of Pius XII.
Carl lung was the descendant of a long line of Swiss Protestant ministers
and an associate and eventually;m opponent of Sigmund Freud, But in his
Aruwer \0 Job he basically defended the papal doctrine. The Book oOoh, with
its climax in the voice of God o m of the whirlW ind. "who is this that
darkeneth LUunsel by "iord~ without knowledge?"iO had pushed the
concept of divine transcendence JUSt about as far as it could go in the
direction of what Martin Luther ,,\rould later call the D~l.I$ absconditllS. the
hidden God. But by u\ doctrine of the incarnallon, and then even more
eITectivel)" by IL'> picture of the Virgm Mar)", Catholic Chmllanit}' had
moll! fled the austenty of this tran.sccndeme, rendering the Dell}' gentler
and llwn' acc~sible, "eveil h a hen gathered! her chickem under her
wings,"11
Already at the time of the promulgation of the dogma of the im-
maculate conception III J 854-, there was \\idC.'opread support III milnr
quarters of the Roman Catholic dllLrch for a corr~ponding definition
of the doctrine of the ilssumption, WHit 195 of the coul1t;!1 filthers in
attendance at the FiN Vatican Council of 1869-70 urging II The
political and e(;(: k~iastical turmoil ,urrounding tlUt council precluded
the possibiltty of ~uch iI definition: but the doctrine of till' assumption
of the Virgin, though it would not become a dogma until 19 SO. and
then only in CatholiCism, did have far better support and more anCient
atteMation in the tradilJon than, for example, the doctrine lJf the im-
maculate conception had had before its definition. II Tllere \\'a~ a spe-
cific feast in the church year, fixed during the Middle Ages at IS
AuguSl. 13 That feast commemorated "tlw day when she Wil~ assumed
from the world md entered into he.l\en," a.~ II Wa\ called b}' Bernard of
ClilirvilUx in the vCTy eptstle in wlm:h he thalJenged the observance of a
fea~t of lhe immaculate conception. 14 By her pre.~ence, Ill' lio1id else-
where, in a set of brilliant sermons on the a\sumption, not only the
entire world but even "the hea\'enly fatherland shine.~ morc brightly
hecall.~e it is illmmned by the glow of her virginal lamp"" I S Her as-

sumption had l'levated her illxwc all the angels and archilngels, and even
aillhe merits of the ~illnts were surpa.\~ed by Ihose Oflhl' one woman.
The h~Umpliol1 of the Virgin meant that human nature had been raised
to a po~itioil ~uperior to that of aJl the Ul1l11ortal spirits.
Eastern Chrhtcndom did not partltlpatc in the dogmatiC definition
of the assumption I to But thai did not mean that the issue had been lefl
without consideration in the development of doctrine in ByzalltlUm.17
There was a tradition repealed hy the Council of Ephe'}u" in -+31, Ihat
when, in obedIence to the word of Chri~t (rom the cro~~, "Woman,
hehold lhy wnl" and "Behold lhy mother l" the disciple John ·'took her
 QUU~ OF H'An~ 107

unto his own home,"!8 they lived in Ephe~us, and that she died there; a
later and quite unreliable tradition even went on to identify the House
o f the Virgin at Ephe~us. The hour o f her death or. as it was mual1y
termed, her falhng asleep or "dormition [koimesis]," 19 was the ~ubject
of many icon~. Those icons reflected the Christian art o f very early
time.<;.lO Becam.e of its prominence in the iconographic tradition, 11 lhe
defenders of the icons also had occasion to speak about the dormition.
Theodore the Srudite, for example, described it as an "ineffable" mys-
tery. al wh ich the twelve apostles, IOgeLher wllh the Old TesL.l.mem
figures of Enoch and Fjijah (hoth of whom had heen assumed bodily
into heaven )Y attended the Theotokos at the cnd of her earthly BfeP
There was a hOmily on the suhJect of the dormition attributed lO the
seventh-century patriarch of Jerusalem . Modcstos. 14 On the hasis of
internal evidence, however, the date o f the homily has beeu moved
forward to a centu ry or so after Modestos, but many o f the Mariologica1
themes celebrated In it were, of cour~e, much older. 25 For, as a later
BYlantine historian reponed. around the end of the sixth century the
festival celebrating the dormitlon had, by imperial decree, been appom-
ted for IS August (which, as we have noted, also became the date in the
Western Church for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin
Mary).26 Thus it eventually became one of the t,",'Clve feasts observed In
the Eastern Church. It is likewise to that period that the earliest icono-
graphic treatmenl~ of it by Byzantine artists are traced. Although an
ivory plaque of the dormition came from a later period in the h istory of
Byzannne art (perhaps as laLe as the twelfth century), it was an espe-
ciilly comprehenslve treatment of the theme: the Theotokos was sur-
rounded by the figures of the twelve apostles, in addition to tWO other<;
with their faces covered (perhaps Enoch and Elijah, for the reasons
indicated earlier); angels hovered overhead. hands extended to receive
her into heaven.17 At the center of the plaque-in a striking reversal of
lhe role~ they took in the conventional icons of MOl her and Child-was
Christ in MaJesty with the infant Mary in his anm. And the adult Mary
reposed III tranq uility. as she was about to be received into heaven-
apparently III body as well as in $oui. as the East and eventually the West
lua "''' .. ~ '" 'UHIS

lame to affirm-where the proce!>S br which her humanllY \\a~ made

dl\int" would be completed.
In the art of the West, the dormition of the Virgin often at least
Implied her a~Slllllption, for example, III Caravaggio's Do:lln of Inr Virllin18
A particularly dramalil dcpinion of the lOnnenioll and the lOntra~t
between the dormilion and the a~sumplion appeared in twO portra)al!>
from the WindlC!>ter ~alter, dated "before 1161," Dooth of 11K Virgin and
Quem of Hctr.m.2'* Angels were in attendam,:e for both e\'cntl>, and once
again Christ wa~ holdlrlg the infant Mary In the moment of her dormi
tion, But the point of the Juxtaposition between the two was that the
figurc who wa~ in rcl'0;,c al'the dormilion, aClording to till' ~lIperscrip­
lion of the second portrail, rei CSI fOlic Reine rld Cit!, "ha~ now bct:ome
Queen of Hca\'cn, ,. Now the angel!> on either side of her held banners
of victory. to show that she, having vanquished the enem} and ha\'ing
crushed the head of the serpent as, accordlllg to the Vulgate. God had
promised already in the Garden of Eden Ihat "she [ipso]" would dO ,30
now participated III the vinory that wa~ accomplished nO! only by the
p.N,ioll and dealh of Christ but also b) the resurrection of Christ. As
Pope Pim XII dedared in Munificrnlisslmu5 IXus. employing in his latin tile
Greek word for the re~urrection, olMlSlllSis. "jmt as the gJoriou!> resurrec-
tiOll of Chmt 19lonosa Chri5ti OJlQSt05isl WaJ; 'lD essential PJrt and the
ultimate trophy or this victory, so the struggle that the Blessed Virgin
had .,llued in common \vith her SOil was to be concluded with the
'glonfication' of her \lrginal body, As the apostle says [I COT_ 15:54,
ba.25:8], 'Whell Ihi.<. mortal ,hall have put 011 immortality, then
shall be brought to pa!>S the saying that is written, Death l~ swallowed
up in lIinoTY:" II
As was c\idcl1t from the pope's rererence to I Corinthiam and
througll il 10 I~alah, "Death is swallowed up in victor)," one guestion
rai~ed by the doctrine of the assumption had been whelher Mary had
e\'er died or \\ h('lher she had, lIke Enoch and Eliph. been taken up alive
Illto heaven.]l TIle prophet'y ofSimt"on to her, considered earlier as a
theme or Mary the Mater Dolorosa, "Yt'<" a sword shall pierce through
thy own soul also,"ll seemed to imply that ~he would die, Ju~t as her
 QUUr< 01 IHAvt!' 109

divine and sinless Son would. As it st<XXI., the prophecy spoke only of
"sorrow, not the martyrdom of death." But this was not an adequate
ground to "arouse doubt concerning her death," because she was by
nature mOrtal. The prophecy did, moreover, appear to disprove the
pious feeling of some that she who had given birth WiUlUU! pain should
also have died without pain: for "by what authority can one suppose
that she did not suffer pain in her body? . , . But whether at her death
she did not feel pain, which God could grant, or whether she did feel it,
which God could permit," the conclusion seemed to be that "the
Blessed Virgin did undergo the vexation of the flesh by dying." Mitigat-
ing rnis conclusion was the widely held belief of "Christian piety" that
her death had been followed immediately by a resurrection, which in
tum was followed by her assumption: for she was "the firstfrulls of
[human] incorruptibility." Yet it was also recognized that "we do not
dare to affirm that the resurrection of her body has already taken place,
since we know that this has nOl been declared by the holy fathers."
Although it was "wicked to believe that the chosen vessel" of Mary's
body had been subject to corruption, still "we do not dare to say that
she was raised, for no other reason than that we unnot assen it on the
basis of evident proof."
The defenders and exponents of the dogma of the assumption have
emphasized its consistency both with the larger body of Christian
teaching and with the Mariological development that had preceded it. H
In her function as the representative o ftbe human race, as noted earlier,
she had uniquely documented the subtle relation between divine grace
and human freedom when, by her voluntary assent to God's plan of
redemption through her Son, "Be it unto me according to thy word, "3~
she had set in motion the series o f events that wouJd lead [0 the
redemption of humanity and its vktory over sin and death through the
death and resurrection of Christ. Her victory over all sin, original and
actual, had been achieved through the unique gift, conferred on her as a
consequence of the merits of Jesus Christ. of being spared the burden of
original sin through her imma.culate conception. It was only logical. so
it could be argued, that when, as Isaiah had prophesied and Paul had
21 0 QllH~' OF H H n ,~

proclaimed. "Death is swallowed up in vktory,"36 her death, tOO,

should participate in that victory by Christ as an anticipation of the full
participation of all the saved through the general resurrection at the end
of human history. There had. after all. been such an anticipation when,
at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, "the graves were opened; and
many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graveS
after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto
many."17 She 'was eminently marc worthy of such an honor than any of
these saints.
Considerations like thc~c havc made thc dogma of the assumption
of the Virgin perhaps the most provOCati ve ill ustration of tbe position of
Mariology in its entirety as the most controversial case study of the
problems represented by "development of doctrine" as a historical
phenomenon and as an ecumenical issue,38 To those who harbored
fundamental misgivings about the very idea of development of doc-
trine, or about the notion that the Virgin Mary should be the subject of
a "doctrine" in her own right rather than be discussed a~ part of the
doctrine of Christ or the doctrine of the church (or about both of these
questions), the evolution of the assumption over a period spanning so
many cenmries, from a pious practice and a liturgical observance to a
speculative theological theory to a dogma that was finally made official
only at the middle of the twentieth century, simply proved that develop-
ment of doctrine \vas pernicious both in theory and in fact. And evell
those Protestant theologians who were prepared to come to terms with
the idea of development as, in the words of the Dominican scholar Yves
Congar, "an inner dimension to that of tradition,"J9 balked at the
assumption. One reason in the case of some of them was, undoubtedly,
a basic aversion to the phenomenon of lay piety, OUl of which, as we
have seen throughout this book, so much of the history of the develop-
ment of Mariology, including the assumption, had emerged. On stich
aversion, the observations of a leading Protestant commentator on Ro-
man Catholicism who was highly critical of its doctrine and its structure
deserve to be quoted ill full :
 The wor ship of God "in Spirit and in trut h" (Joh n 4 :24] is
an ideill that is only seld om attained in its entirety. Onl y cer-
tain indi vidu als, as for exa mpl e the great mystics, have bee n
capable of it. Basically, all pop ular piet y is a com prom ise.
Onl y a few peo ple gra.sp the idea th.tt we can app roac h God
only thro ugh pict ures and symbols. But it wou ld be crue l to
dep rive the grea t mass of Simple souls of such pict ures and
symbols, for this wou ld CUt them off from any access to the
bein g of God itself. Wh y sho uld God not hea r even a pray er
addressed to Mar y if it rises from a sim ple, piOUS heart? To
use a figure, God mus t smi le at our mor e spi ritual form s of
dev otio n and our high theo logi cal skill, just as we adults
kindly reco gniz e the seri ous pur pos e manifes t in the games
of chil dren ... . Many a Protestant fanatic, who flies into a
rage whe n he sees a votive tablet with the mOtto "Ma ry has
help ed me, " doe s not realiz.e at all how pett y his own ba.sl c
Idea of God is. Perhaps tbis sam e filoati c rega rds it as his sa-
cred duty to tie God's salvation to som e part icul ar dog mat iC
fonn ula . . . . No, naive and unc ons ciou s pag anis m is not the
real evil in Marian piety."'o

It bea rs rem arki ng that those wor ds were writ ten only a few years
after
the dog ma of the assu mpt ion has bee n prom ulga ted but a few
years
befo re the Second Vatican Cou ncil had been convoked.
On the eve of the Seco nd Vatican Cou ncil it ilppeared reasonable to
sugg est that ecu men ical und e rsta ndin g wou ld com e if Rom an Cath
olics
cou ld re<:ognize wha t mad e the Ref orm ation necessary and Prot estil
lltS
wha t milde it possible. On no issue of doc trin e was that pan dox
mor e
strik.ingly appropriilte tban on the doc lrin e of Milry.", 1 The re wer
e ob-
serve.rs, both hostile ... nd friendly, who exp ecte d- or fea red -tha
t the
"ne w" dog ma of 1950 wou ld lead a dec ade later to furt her Mariolo
gi .
cal dev elop men t and to the defi nitio n of ildditional "ne w" doc trin
es.-1- 2
To them , the Second Vatlcan Cou ncil cam e as a disappointmelll,-1-3
lUSt
as the issuance of the papal bull Ineffabilis Dws br Pope Pius IX on 8
December 1854 had been ohliged to yield center stage to the First
Council of the Vatican fifteen years later For although, a~ Avery Dulles
has said, "a separate document on the Blessed Virgin was contemplated,
and was presCllted in draft form by the Theological Commission at the
first session in 1962," the council went on to incorporate the doctrine
of Mary into its first decree, the Dogmatic Constitution on Ihe Church,
lumm Gentium:H "The Fathers," Dulles continues, "saw a danger in
tfeating Mariologr too !TI\lCh in isolation; they preferred to link her role
more closely with the main. theme of the Council, the Church, ".. 5 They
also wanted itlo be seen, as they themselves put it, that they "carefully
and equally avoid the falsity of exaggeration on the one hand, and the
excess of narrow-mindedness on Ule other, "46 partly on ecumenical
grounds and partly 10 come to terms with the new biblical and histori-
cal scholarship within Roman Catholic circles that had inspired 50 many
of the council's actions, What emerged from this process was no new
doctrine at all but a balanced and evenhanded summary, dated 21
Novemher 1964, of the principal themes of the entire historical devel-
opment of the doctrine of Mary.
The five major headings, which the council itself supplied for its
text, read:

l. The Role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the Mystery of
Christ and the Church, au.:ording to which "because of this
gift of sublime grace she far ~urrasses all other creatures,
both in heaven and on earth"; and yet "at the same time,
however, because shc belongs to thc offspring of Adam
she is one with all human beings in their need for salva-
tion." Nevertheless, "the Synod does not, however, have it
in mind to give a complete doctrine on Mary l completom de
Maria proponae doctrinam], nor does it wish to decide those
questions which have not ret been fully illuminated hy
the work of theologians."
II, The Rolt of the Ble;srd Virgin in the Economy of Sail1ltion, including
 QUEE N O f HEAVEN III

the way "the boo ks of the Old Testament ... , as they

are read in the Chu rch and are und erst ood in the ligh t of
a fu rthe r and ful l revelation, brin g the figu re of {he
wom an . Mot her of the Red eem er, into a grad uall y
shar per focus" (Gen. 3: 15, Isa. 7: 14]. Thr oug h the enu re
hist ory of the Bibl e. "the Blessed Virgin advanced in her
pilg rim age o f faith . and loyally pers ever ed in her unio n
with her Son unto the cros s."
Ill. The Blesstd Virgin and the Church. in whi ch "the Blessed Virg in
was eter nall y pred esti ned , in con junc tion with the inca r-
na tion of the d ivin e Wo rd, to be the MOIhcr of God ." so
that "Ma ry figu red prof oun dly in the hist ory of salvation
and in a certain way unites and mir rors w ithin h erse lf the
cent ral trut hs of the faith (in histllriam sa/utis intime ingr('SS(l,
lIIIlXima fidei placito in S( quadammodo unit tl rtverbtmt]."
IV. Devotion to tht Blesso.J Virgin in the Church, with the directive
"tha t prac tices and exercises of dev olio n tow ard her (proxts
tt txmirias pictatis ergo Earn J be trea sure d as reco mm end ed
by the teac hing auth orit y of the Chu rch in the cou rse o f
cen turi es." but with the war ning "tha t true dev otio n con -
sislS neit her in frui tless and passing emo tion , nor in a
cert ain vain cred ulity [JI(qu e in stnili tt tmruitorio afftctu, neque
in I'(1n1l quodam crMuljUlle]."
V. Mary, a Sign of Sure Hope and of Solace for Gods People in Pilgrimage.
beca use "in the bod ily and spir itual glory whi ch she pos -
sesses in heav en, the Mot her o f Jesus con tinu es in this
p rese nl wor ld as the ima ge and fi rst flowerin g of the
Chu rch [imago ct inilium EcdesiaeJ." ... 7

Man y of thes e guid ing prin cipl es wer e alm ost (if not quit e) form
ulat ed
in the term s tha.t have bee n emp loye d here . in the prec edin g cha pter
s of
this boo k. and that are sum mar ized in the cha pter to follow.
M.i.;'CI orUIC S,unt Luq' LeW.:nd, MGr). Quem of Ifflll'!!!. c. 1~8S_ Cl 1996 ~Id orTru'Iee.,
Niuon.al GilielY or Art. WI.hinWton ~moel H Kres5 CollectIon
 16 The Woman lor All Sea sons-
And All Reasons

For, lithoid, from hmcdonh a1l prol ions shall c4ll me bkwd.
~Lukf 1:48

urin g nearly twenty cen turies, these wor ds of the Magnificat

have com e true ove r dod over, and only the mos t chu rlish have dare d
to be
an exce ptio n to them . Retrospective con side ratio n of the man y topi cs
and
them es of this boo k suggests various areas of history for whi ch
the
centrality of the pers on of the Virgin Mary is an indispensable inte rpre
-
tive key. Her imp ortance as suc h a key doe s nO! dep end on the beli
ef o r
unb elle f of the obse rver ; for even thos e who do nOl, or can not, have
faith
need to grasp the fait h of oth er ages in ord er 10 und erst and them .
It is impossible to understand the history of Western spir ituality and
devotion with out paying aHention to the place of the Virgin Mary. The
"social hist ory" of vari ous ages and various places has bee n eng agin
g the
au enti on of man y of the mOSt imp orta nt and prod ucti ve h isto rians
du r-
ing the past gen erat ion or two. Our s is, therefore, a time of great inte
rest
in the hist ory of ever yday life and ther efor e also in "po pula r relig
ion. "
Scholars have zealously sou ght a met hod olog y that wou ld get bey ond
the
dom inan ce of "high cult ure' · to disc ove r the beliefs and practice
s of
sim ple and illiterate people. Such a met hod olog y has, on closer scru
tiny,

'"
proven to be a far subtler problem than it might have appeared at first.
How does one read the surviving evidence, much of it literary in form, in
order to prohe the hidden (or even concealed) material it contains about
the lower classes and the other members of the silent majorit y? How, for
example, should the social historian read the legislation of other eras?
Does the repetition of prohibitions directed agaillSt certain practices
necessarily imply that those practices held on among the cOlllmon
people, or could the repetition be evidence of the inherent tendency of
laws to be left standing on the books long after the need for them has
passed and the reason for them has heen forgotten? Because, in the case of
the church, a major component in the history of its legislation has taken
the form of liturgy. creed, and dogma . should the historian in a later age
automatically assume. as orthodox theologians and historians have
sometimes tended to do. that what the councils of the church legislated a~
dogma and liturgy was what the common people actually believed? Or
conversely. is the frequent and no less automatic assumption among
modern seculariZing historians any more plausihle. that what the COIll-
man people actually believed was undoubtedly quite different from
dogma and creed and that the "real meaning" of popular religion is to be
sought in the categories of race or class or gender or anywhere else except
in creed and liturgy? It would also seem to be an essential assignment
specifically for such social history to ask, and if possible to answer at least
in part. questions about the movement of idea.s and practices in the
opposite direction. from the raith of the common people into liturgy.
creed. and dogma. rather than the mher way around.
At least within the history of Christianity. it is difficult to think of a
more filling theme to explore for its bearing on these issues than the
Virgin Mary_ Why has she maintained her hold on most of the Western
world even in a secular age and even in the face of anti-religious propa-
ganda and downright persecution during the Communist era in Eastern
and Central Europe? It was not primarily because she has been the subject
of solemn pronouncements of doctrine and creed since the councils of
the early Christian centuries and was in fact the subject of the most recent
official promulgation of a dogma hy a pope. all 1 November 1950. A far
 WO MA N f O R All JP ASON S 117

mor e imp orta nt exp lana tion is that she has bee n, to para phra se the
fa -
mou s wor ds of "Lig ht-H orse Har ry" lee abo ut George Was hing ton
in
179 9, "first in the hea rts of her cou mry men ." His tori ans and compar.
lti-
vist.~, not to men tion suc h prop aga ndis ts and pers
ecut ors, have fre -
que ntly rem arke d on the con tinu ity and tenaCity of relig ious dev
otio n
from one peri od to ano ther, incl udin g the pers iste nce of exte rnal
dev o-
tional obs erva nce long after the deat h of the de\'Otion itse lf, Nor wou
ld it
be sou nd to igno re the sub tle but pro fou nd cha nge s that can take place
in
the mea ning of words and actions across suc h con tinu ities , for whi
ch, as
we have seen , dev otio n to Mary prov ides man y strik ing exa mpl es.
A special form of dev otio n to the Virg in Mar y has been Mar i<ln
mysticism , We may leave ilSide for the mom ent the high ly moo ted
que s-
tion of whe ther the mystical form of dev otio n and langua.ge has a legi
ti-
mat e place in the Christi.rn faith . But if it doe s. it has foun d som e
of its
mos t pro fou nd exp ress ions in the prayers and poe try addressed to
the
Virgin. As it is the amb itio n of the mystic to rise thro ugh the visible
to the
Invisible and thro ugh the thin gs of eart h to the thin gs of heaven. so
thes e
prayers to Mary take thei r sUrt from her sim ple historical pers on and
her
hum ble earthly life to rise tow ard h er special place in the king dom of
God
and her uniq ue role in the Ulliverse. This mystical vision of the Virg
in.
moreover, is nOt inte nde d merely fo r passive enjo yme nt but has bee
n said
to carr y a tran sfor min g power, as thos e who have had the priv ileg
e of
beh oldi ng the Que en of Heaven have ded icated thei r lives to her serv
ice.
Thu s in his pow erfu l poe m, "Th e Blessed Virgin Com pared to the Air
We
Breathe," Ger ard Manley Hop kins spo ke .1bo ut

New N.1Zareths in us,

Wh ere she shall yet con ceiv e
Him . mor ning , noo n, and eve.
New Bethlems, and he born
There. eve ning . noo n, and mo m-
Beth lem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like brea th
More Christ and baffle death;
21 8 WO MA ~ f O~ All SEASONS

Who, born so, comes to be

New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God's and Mary's Son. I

Here the union with Christ of which the apostle Paul spoke when he said,
"I am crw.:ified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me, " 2 was expanded into a union also with his Mother, yet in a highly
Christo centric form . Because of the reliance on trendy "psychobabble"
that seems to have gained such currency also among academics, it does
perhaps need to be added that this Marian mysticism has by no means
been confined to celibate men such as Gerard Manley Hopkins, but has
been widely cultivated among both men and women, married as well as
celibate.
That observation may be the appropriate wntCX\ in which to con~

sider the psychological significance of Mary. And in the first instance that
pertains above all to her significance for women . As clergy of all denomi-
nations have noted, the women were the first to render service to Christ
on Easter Sunday morning- and that, they have often been tempted to
add, is the way it has been on most Sunday mornings ever since. Many of
the mighty women of the history of the Middle Ages, for example, are
knov,," to us chiefly or even solely through the medium of what men
wrote down from them or about them. It has been pointed out earlier
that the visions of Birgitta of Sweden were transmitted chiefly in Latin.
and in a version intended to demonstrat~ her credentials as a candidate
for sainthood. Or, to mention two examples from the fourth century who
deserve to be compared in Plutarchian "parallel lives" : Saint MaCTina,
sister of two of the most important theologians of the Greek East , Saint
Basil of Caesarea and Saint Gregory of Nyssa, who was celebrated by the
latter of these as addphr kai didillkala5, "our sister and our teacher" in
philosophy and theology; and Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine,
who taught him and bore w ith him through the trials of his stormy
youth, until Saint Ambrose of Milan, who eventually was to baptize
 WO'U~ fOK H l H"<OJ< S 119

Augustine, told her that the child of such tears wuld not be lost If we
could enabh: the s11ent millions among Medieval women to recover their
voices, the evidence that we do have from those relatively f",w who did
leave a wriuen record strongly suggests thaI it was with the figure of Mary
thaI many of rhem identified themselves-with her humility, ye~, but
also with her defiance and with her victory: "Deposuil potmlO" dt sahbus SIlis, ct
(xallavil hwnlles; esurien!es irnplevit bonis, tt divites dimj~l! inanes-He hath put
down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree; he
hath filled the hungry with good thmgs, and the rich he hath sent empty
away." And he could do it again.
Because of that role that she has been playing for the history of rhe
past twenty centuries, the Virgin Mary has been the subject of more
thought and discussion about what it means to be a woman than any
other woman in Western history. To an extent that many have chosen to
ignore, explanations about Mary o r PlJrtralts of her in words or in pic-
tures can tell us much about how "the feminine" has been perceived.
Together with Eve. with whom she has often been contrasted as the
Second Eve, she has provided the subjeCl matter for some oflhe best and
some of the worst in that checkered history. A highly one-sided and
prejudiced account of this history has been pernllltcd to engage in a
drastic kind of oversimplification that would be attacked. and rightly, if it
were arguing on the opposite SIde, Because Mary is the Woman par
excellence for most ofWeslern history. the subtletie!> and complexitIes in
the imerpretation of her person and work are at the same rime central to
the study of the place of women in history, which has begun to claim its
proper share both o f scholarly and of popular attention. But some ex-
tremely valuable resources for that history are bdng neglected.
Another important part of thiS psychological significance orMary has
been her function as the symbol of those qualities, in a God who is
beyond all gender. that ha"e traditionally found expression through the
feminine. Although it is fashionable today to speak about Judaism and
Christianity as "patriarchal" not only in their ethics and way of life bUl in
their picture of God, the most serious ret1ection o fJewish and Christian
thought has transcended any such easy identification For "the divine
power," as Gregory of Nyssa wrote, "though it is exalted far above our
nature and inaccessible to all approach, like a tender mother who joins in
the inarticulate ulterances of her babe, gives to our human nature what it
is capable of receiving: and thus in the various manifestations of God to
humanity, God both adapts to humanity and speaks in human lan-
guage. "3 And an important bearer of this dimension in the relation of
God to humanity has been the person o f Mary. That has made her promi-
nent also in the relation between Christianity and other religions. As
Christianity confronted religions in whi ch not only gods but goddesses
were central, it had in MarY ,a way of simultaneously affirming and yet
correcting what those goddesses s)'mbolized. The most striking symbol
of how she did this is probably to be found in the cit y of Ephesus, as noted
earlier. ~ According to the Book of Acts, the preaching of the apostle Paul
there posed a threat to the silversmiths of the city, who made their
livelihood by fashioning silver shrines to the goddess Artemis. To combat
the threat of this new deity \vithout a face, they stirred up a riot among
the people with the cry "Great is Diana ufthe Ephesians!"S And it was in
that same. city of Ephesus, slightly less than four centuries later, that the
Third Ecumenical Council of the church in 431 solemnly decreed that
Mary was to be called MOl her of God, Theotokos.
Yet another dimension of her psychological significance has been
pedagogical. Throughout most of the history of Christian education, at
least until the Reformation, the lives of the saints served as patterns of
character, and among these the life of Mary occupied a unique position,
corresponding to the unique position she had occupied in the plan of
God. Each of the special Christian virtues-or, as they were often deSig-
nated, "theological virtues"-defined in the New Testament, "faith,
hope, and charity, these three,"6 but also each orthe four classical vir-
tues-or, as they were often designated, "cardinal virtues" -defined by
Plato ~nd then incorporated into the dcuterocanonical Wisdom of Solo-
man, "temperance and prudence, justice and fortitude, " 7 found a special
embodiment in her. Taken together, these seven virtues were fundamen -
tal to moral teaching. But in the saims, and to a special degree in the
person of [he Virgin Mary, these virtues were there not only to be admired
 W O "'AN J O I A LL.$ EA SON S HI

and che rish ed bUl ta be imil ated , Individual inci den ts from the Gos
pels
in whi ch she was som etim es little mor e than a bit player nevertheles
s lem
themselves to elab orat ion as guid es to God -ple asin g behavior. Above
all,
she served as a mod el of the fund ame ntal Chr isti an- and particul
arly
mo nas tic- virt ue of hUmility. "Qu ia respexit bumililolan anci llae
suae "
was how the Lann Vulgate translated, or really mis tran slat ed, her wor
ds
in the Magnificat,8 whi ch are mor e accurately rend ered , for exam ple,
in
the New Revised Standard Version with "Fo r he has looked with favo
r on
the low liness of his servant." Mis tran slation or not, however, this hum
ili-
tatan in the Vulgate bct.:ame the occasion for som e of the mos t prof
oun d
exp lorations of the con cep t of hum ilit y-n ot in the sense in whi ch
Uria h
Hee p of Charles Dickens's DaIoid Coptlfrfidd cou ld say, "I am well awa re
that I
am the ' um blest pers on goin g. . .. My mot her is likewise a very num
ble
pers on. We live in a num ble abode,·· but in the sense in whi ch Aug
ustine
cou ld ~y, "All stre ngth is in hum ility, beca use all prid e is fragile.
The
hum ble are like a rock: the rock seem s to lie dow nwa rds, but neverth
eless
it is firm."9
Nor has it been only for mor ality and life that Mary has been imp or-
tant. By one of the mOSt dram atic reversals in the hist ory of ideas,
this
hum ble peasant girl from Nau rem has bee n mad e the sub ject of som
e of
the mos t su blim e and even eXlIavagant theo logi cal spec ulat ion
ever
thou ght up, con side rable port ions of whi ch have bee n occ upy ing
these
pages. It is a fascinating questio n to ask just why and how a part
icul ar
~ubj ect "be com es a doc trin e." It can not be sim ply beca
use it is spo ken of
in the Bible: ther e are hun dred s of references to "mo ull! ilins " in the
Bible,
and man y hun dred s to the flora and fauna of the Nea r Ea..~t; yet no one
has
ever seriously sug gest ed thai ther e be a "do ctri ne" of bird s or tree
s or
hills , One decisive crite rion has prob ably bee n the con nec tion of a part
ic-
ular tOpic with the central theme.~ o f the biblical mes~ge. Thu s ang
els
qua lifie d as a doc trin e not sim ply beca use angels wer e men tion ed
in the
Bible or beca use they wer e identified as creatures of God but beca
use,
from the angel who was post ed at the gate of the Gar den of Eden afte
r the
fall to (he ang el who cam e to stre ngth en Chri~t in the Garden of
Get h-
sem ane on the nigh t before his death.LO angels wer e nOl only mes seng
ers
but actors, dr~mati~ personae, on the biblical stagl'; the two gardens, of
Eden ~[)d ofGethsemane, in contr~~t, were only part of the scenery in the
drama.
The explidt references in the New Testament to Mary the mother of
Jestl~ Vlere few in number, and most were qllite brief. Even when, by
typology or allegory, various sta[ement~ were applied to her that were
taken from earlier bIblical books, relatively little amplification was sup~
plied. From this sparse evidence, however, Christian thought almost from
the beginning was moved to reflect on its hidden and deeper meanings
and 011 its potential implica~ions. The methods of wch reflection were
many and various, but at their core they constituted an efforL to find and
to formulate her place within the themes of the bIblical message. Con-
cerning no other merely human being, none of the prophets or apostles
or saints, has there heen even a small fraction of the profOtlrld theological
reneuioll that has been called forth by the person of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. It has been a continuing question as we have looked at "Mary
through the centufles" just why this should have been so, and just how
the bits of information about her proVided by the Bible of both Testa
melltS could have been expanded into a full-blown Mariology. Con-
versely, it also bears asking what has happened in those theological sys-
tems, such as those of Protestal1ti~m since the Reformation, in whkh,
without any denial of the uniqueness of the Virgin Birth of Christ, the
person of his Mother as such has not been accorded speCial sigl1lficance.
For in a curious way these systems, too, are part of the unbreakable hold
that she has continued to have on the imaginarion of the West.
That imagination has expres~ed itself above all, of COllfSC, through
the place of the Virgi n in the history of the arts, as this is symbolically
depicted in the serenade of the angelic orchestra amusingly and pro-
foundly portrayed by the ~ft('ellth-century Flemish Master of the Saint
Lucy Legend. From the many that have been cited or alluded to carlier, let
Just three examples suffice now in conclusion. Among the hundreds of
lovely settmgs of the AI'c Maria, that of Franz Schubert may be the most
familiar and the most beloved. nle paintings of Madonna and Chi Id have
been so frequent that it would be possible to write a history of the idea of
 WOo.tM< fOl ALL HASO'<S 223

children on the basis of them. And one of the great churches of the West
is Romt!'s Santa Maria Maggiore, constructed in direct response to the
proclamation by the Coundl of Ephesus in 431 that she was to be called
Theotokos. Even more unIversally than Goethe might have meant it,
then, "the Eternal Feminine leads us upward." 11
 Bibliographic Note

The bibliography about the Virgin Mary is truly enormous. The on-line
catalog of lhe Yale University ubrary at the end of 1995 listed 2,424
books on the subject (a few of them duplicates), and that did not include
either articles or most works from before this century. Among books
ahout her, some should be listed here. because they could have been cited
in every chapter: Juniper Carol, ed. , Mariology, 3 vals. (Milwaukee: Bruce,
195 5-61); Carol Graef, Mary: A HIstory of DOC/fine and Orvotioo, 2 vals. (New
York: Sheed and Ward. 1963 - 65); Walter Delius. Gcschichl~ det Marien-
I'Crehrung (Munich: Ernst Reinh;.rdt Verlag, 1963); the I ,042-page ency-
clopedic dictionary by Wolfgang Reinert and Heinrich Petri, Handbuch der
Marienkunde (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 1984); and the massh-e Festschrift to
Rene Laurentin , Kechoril1imene: Melanges Rene Lourentin (Paris: Desch~e, 1990).
The subje<:t of Mary has been engaging me as scholar ilnd author for
more than four decildes. As Herman Kogan has described in The Great EB,
my long and fruitful il.ssociil.tioll with Ern:yclopacdia BritanmC(I began in the
1950s, when I was called in ror crisis manil.gement after several succes-
sive drafts for the article MARY by various authors had been rejected hy

m
116 11IlI O~ R~ HII C " OTI

one or .lnother outside reviewer. Th.lt article continues to appear in the set
to the present; and thirty years later, employing its basic structure, I wrote
m ess.lY that appeart'"d, in German in 1985 and in English lfl 1986, on
"Mary-Exemplar of the Development of Chris Ii an Docmne" as put of
Jaroslav Pelikan, David Ftusser, and Justin Lang, Mary: Imagcs of thr Malhn of
/erus in }rIl"ish anti ChriStian Ptrsp«lh'c, published in the United Stales by For-
tress Press. My Rlddlr of Roman GuholJcism, wrinen on the eve of the Second
Vatican Council and honored with the Ahlllgdon Award in 1959, con-
tained a chapter entltled "Ave Maria." The public.ltion of the English
translation o( 0110 Semmein?th, Mary, ArcnrlYJlC of th r Church (New York.:
Sheed and Wud, 1963), gave me the opportunity to prepare.l brief essay •
as a fore''''ord entitled "The Basic Marian Idea." In the Thomas More
l ectures, published by Yale University Press in 1965, Ik..dopmmt of Christian
DoctrilH': Som~ HlswncaJ ProlcgomaKI, I had anai}'zed "Athanasius on Mary,"
especially his idea of the Theotokos. The Mason Gross lectures at Rutgers
UniverSIty, whi ch J delivered in 1989 and which were published in 1990
by Rutgers University Press as Eternal FtllllnintS: Three Thr:ological Allegorits in
Oo:rnlt's ·Porooi50". mcluded a chapter on Dante's vision of the. Virgin Mary.
The And rew W Mellon lectures at the Nation ..l Gallery of Art . delivered
for the twelve-hundredth anniversary of the Second Council ofNicae. in
1987 and published by Princeton University Press also in 1990 as Imago
Dd, contained a discussion of early Byzantine iconography of Mary and of
its theological justification. Fallst the ThroJogian, my Willson Leclllres at
Southwestern University published by Yale University Pres.... in 1995,
climaxed, as does Goethe's MllSt, with the picture of Mary as the Mater
Glorios.. and the Eternal Feminine. Moreover, throughout the five vol-
umes of The ChrIStian Tradition, which appeared at the University of Chicago
Press between 1971 and 1989, the doctrines of Mary from various pe-
riods repeatedly came in for close attention.
All of these previous treatmenL.. of Mary have made their contri-
blltion to this hook, and I am grateful for the opportunity (and. where
appropriate. the permission) to recycle them here for the first time in a
full-length and connected historical aCCOtllll; simple references \0 the
lx>oks, as di~linct from such passa.ge~. are introduced with "See." ln
the docu mentation for all these books . .md above all for the la~t one cited,
the hu nd reds of citations from p ri mary sources underl ying the historical
narrative have also been identified III fuU ,.md It did seem supererogatory
to repeat most of them here.
 Abbreviations

.DB AMbor DicliOllClry of tilt; 8iM •. Edited by David Noel Freewmn et al.
6 vols New York Doubleday. 1992 .

&ucr-GingfJch &Ouer, Walter, F Wilbur Gingrich, et iI., ed~. II Grmt.EDglilh

L.o:kon 01 dlt NCII' Ttslomml and Dlbe, Early Chri5ffan Iltrmtuct. 2d ed.
Ch ic~o ; Univer~ity orChlago Press, 1979.

Deferrari-BMry Defernri, R.oy J" ind Inviolal;t M. &rry. ed5. A InIC"" of St.
Tbomos Aqlllnm BmaI 011 tbr "Summa Tbrologic." and Sda:lrd f'nwIsr of
H IS OdN7 \.tIorb. Wcltington. D.C: Cuhol;c University o f
Amerin Press, 1948.

Deru.inger [)enzinger, Henrlcw;, and Adolfus SchOnmctzer, em. Eno;hiridioo

IfmbolclIum o:Iitlonum tI dccLzmllooum <k rrbus fidti et mClrum. 36th ed.
freiburg md Rome; Herder. 1976.

DIC DkliOMOire de thfclogli Cdlhohqut 15 vok and indexes. Paris:

Letouzey 1'1 Ane. 1909-72,

l.m" Lampe, Geo ffrey W. H ., ed, A Pauis!;! Grtd w icO!I . Oxford:

Clarendon Press. 1961,
230 HUHIAflON5

Uddell·Scoll· Jon"s UddclJ, Henry George. Roben ScOIl, ;md Henry StUiJ'l Jones,
eds ..... Gmk-Enghslllt.1i!OIl 9ili I'd. Oxford: CUrt-ndon Press,
19'\ 0.

om T1w Odo,d EnBI~ 0i'1I01101)' 16 vots. Oxford. Oxford Uni~ersilr

Press. 1933- 86.

l'III,oIogIO Grato 162 vots.. Pans, J. P Migne. 18S7-66.

Pl

Schiff Schiff, PhlIlp. ed. Cm:d5 of Climlmdom, "llh GHJi{Ory GIld C"ucol
"1011:$. l vols. 6lh ed. Repnm edition. Gr.llld R.tPHB, Mich.
&ker Book'HouJiO:', 1990.

Sophocles Sophocles, EA. ed. Gnd.. talCO!l of tht Roman and Bponllnt I'!fiock
Boston linle, Brown .lnd Com~ny. 1870.

T,mner Tinner. Normln p. ed. D«rm of [M E,ullI(I!i(ol Couocds. 2 ,"ol~.

WishlngtOn, D.C.' ~orgl'lown University Press, 1990.
 Notes

Inuoduction
1. Juoslav Pelihn,}esuf Througb the CIIHUIiG: Hi, Pile! In lilt Hillo!), of CW!Un: (New Hlv~n ind
London , Yile University Pn:s.s. 1985), L
1. JMIleS Amok! Hepokoskl, 0Idl0 (Cimbridge: C,/ombridg", UniveIlity Press, 198 7), 11-
75. I un lDdebted for this n:ference to Phili p ~.eu.
3, Willi~ Sh.i.kesp"ln:. OIhdio, Vii.25 .
4. A1eundrl to Aleks.lndr Syfoooiilrsky. 29 November 1917 . In Mirk D, Steinberg md
Vudimir M Klnusll,)ev. eds., TM .. II of til< RoaI"IICPIi (New HiVen ;tJld London: Yak Unl -
versily ~. 1995). 106. Her letters. ;os weD u UtO$e of the cur, ire reple~ "'ith
such reJeren.= to the Virgin Muy.
S. CBS News, 23 Jmu.uy ! 995 (the di.y if!er her deith i t the ige of 10+) .
6. Rich.ord Rodriguu. Dvy!: f>f 0Wi~!1on: All AlJlIImIIII with My Maican FaIM (New Yori.: Ptn-
guin Books, 1993). \6-20.
7. W,lIiirn F M.o~tri. M~'l' Model of Ju$tla.: Rc!b:tkInI on {lit Moan1boar (New York: Alb.. House.
1987) , xl.
8. S«, e.g., bibo:l Bcuwy. ! Am lh< GUillaiGl! of II>< FGlth: RqIorltd ~iri"'" 01 tilt M(Il/Itr of God Ip
Ecuador (Steubenville. Obio; Fr;t.Dciscin Uoh'enily I're$s, 1991): see a1so c!u.pter 13.
bclow
9. Rjd1.1rd Foley. Th. DIdIM of MaiiUf'1)lI (Dublio: VerhiS. 1992) : Medjugorje Is locm'd
withIn the context of the nineteenth -cenru.y ~pp.o.rition. by ~ndTl L. Zimdns-Swmz,
F"",..,llrina Mary: FUJII! 1.1 Salent III Mrdtllf'r;r (PrincelOo, N.J.: PrlncelOIl UnIversity Press.
199 1).
10. Eliz.belh Rubin . "Souvenir Mirld es: Going to Set the Virgi n 10 WeneTO Her_
zegovinl. ... H~rpcl l, Feb.Ul TY 1995. 63-70.

'"
lH 'JOHIH>PAGn,-"

L L, ~ !he I«ern stud}' of Jill Dub,sch. Ln G Dlffrrllli ,,*t: l'iit"""'iIt. Gawal. GIld f'o/lll~ GJ G
G,tdr. r...., Shnnr (Princ~0I1. N I PuuCCH1Il U ""cru!) Pr=>. I 99S).
11 F Adene} w..lpok. \Volllm uf tIw Ktwo btGmml (Loudon. J~nlCS NiSbc!. 1901). 83~
J 3 Wollh~f( SchliLhung. MGIUiI o,t Montl]GII 'n M,d. T"'uOll ....J Ferrun,= (Wuppen~1 I\.
RrO<.klu.u~. 1989 )_
II AI";n John xhcnidl. VaW ...d S,k:nced How COhUf~ SM;rerl Sa,II TlKoIogy (M.wn. Gi. Mer·
~u Umv(lSuy Pr(s<. 1989).95.
15 SUllone de &.uvoir, Tilt St.'ond St~. II H M. Pirshley (~ewYor k_ Alfr~"<l A. Knopf.
1971).171,
16 Els M'Cl~dbc/ghe. Dcsprralrly StdIill9 M~ry: II Ftm,nl>1 ArrrorflGliOl1 of. TI.dlli~",,1 RdISiDU!
Symbcl (Klmpt'n. The Ne,hcrlinds; Phi/OS, 1991)_
17, MiUr!CC H~IlllllgIOIl. Hail MOly? Tht Suusglr lor UJwnal. Worn4nbood ,n CalholIcism (New
York. Roudedge. 1995).
18 Ehubelh Schii"IB Fiorello.. ··I'er1II1l.Sl Theology L~ I Critiul 1111:0Iog) ofllberi-
lion. ~ .n Churches In Sttu9!Jk: UDrrallO.ll TblOlos,a Gn.l SonGI ~ ,n Nonb AmesKC, ed. Wil-
Ulm K T.bb (N~ York Momhl)' Revi('W ~~. 1986). ~7 . ~9
19. Piul E~dobm",". \%mon Gnd riot .0;.""(101[ of lilt "oM II Chrmian Anlhmpalosy 011 r~ Chari""" al
~. tr. Anthony P_ G)(h,d (Cres!woorl. N Y 51. Vbdimir', X",mif)' ~. 199 ... ).
10 J Gresh.", Miche". Tht Vili,n 8mh of Chllu (Ncw York Huper md 8r<Hh~rs. r 930).
21,5<:( Pehhn. Flu"er, Ind ung. Mo'l": H~ns Kung Ind Jiirgen Mollm."n. t<is, Mo,y in I'"
Churches (Nev.-· Yorx; CQn(".iliurll. 1983),
22, H'lfl~ Ucs VOll B.hhlS-ar. rh,odrum~ ; Thtologicol Dromolt< nwy' Ir, Gnhlm Harrison (Sail
FUl1ciKO: Ignillm Pre<-•. 1992). 3,193

Chop-ttr I MlIImn of NOllUmlr

I. Lou.s Gln>..oog, ltpk 01 rllt B,bIt (N~w York: Simon ifld Schusrer. J 956). xxi
1_ Tbt C«hohc EII(ydoptJic, 15 ... 6-..E.
3 B.lu('r..(jlngnch. "'91.
4 See ch.pl~~ I 1 ifld IS. hel""
5 ~)mond E_ 8' ''''·11. K,rI P Donrn(d./oseph II Fltzm)·e., ind John Reuminfl, cds.
MOlY in ,IN; Nt... T<SlIlmmL A. Colioboramt ~r ~r P,OlalGnl anJ Rom<lll U!liw/" s.:holan (Phll
~dc1phii ind New York. Fortress Pre;s and Faulis! Press. 1978). 28 ·29.
6. Mau 28,18-19.
7_ Oi:nzlngcr, 125,
a John Courmty MurriY. Tlot Probkm of GCIII Yl:li<J<:\Gy olld Today (N~w HiVen and London.
Y.. I~ Unh·ersily~. 196",),55
9 Mm 16-26-28. M.,k 14:22-H. Luke 2219-20; 1 Cor II B-lS
10. T.. nn~r. 230-31. 695_
II M.iU_ 16:18_
12 DenLiIlRcr.875

GtlItrI._
I], /.f"OI.l.~ Pt:lihn. ··0....."" ~"': The TIl"" ..... n Hermeneutics of Augustlne." III Pro-
cfl!dlllfS of lilt PMR Conk""'t "I., (1981-88): 17-30: ~1I",'1I4. wi 1. 1IIr-
gullill( "Sa.ond fowIdcr at th, Nuh: cd J~ph C ScLln.ubdl iJld F,,--derR~ Vin Fle!eren
(New York ""Ier ~g). 329 43
14 M~u 2S,19 ; John 1·1.
15. Jrlhn 1:1. 14,28,
 ~'OTESTOPAGn' I_ 1 1 III

16, MlU , U8; Luk~ 1:34-35.

I7.Johnl:H.
18. John ]:12-13
19 Til< N.... ]mIHJem BIN. (Garden City, NY.; Ooubl ... d.oy, t 985), 1 745.
20. S« ch~pter 2. belov.·
21 Schill". 2, SJ
22. Luke ]:28 (Va).
23. Blmer·Gmgrich. 877-78~ Lampe. 1514- 18
H. S« chl.p!:er 15. below.
25 UK I: I H], with b,bliognphy Oos~f Andrus Jungomnn)
26. Luke L28. 42.
F . G.u. 4:4
28. Job H.I.
29. Willinn Sh.Uespeare. Ma:bM. Vvtii. I 2-16
30. Rom. 5:19.
3], Luke 3:]5 .
32. John 1:29; 27.
33, Luke 1:42-43.
H, Cf. L\lk~ ]:36.
35. no,rdinand Hihn. Christclogls:o:"" HohfilSlild: lbrc ~hJ(h(. im friihm Chri<lmtum (GO'(ingm:
Vlndenhoeck und Rupl1!du, 1963),
36. o.,m. 6:4; Mark 12:29,
37. Luke 1:26-27.
311. s..,~ Jean Petrin, Lt sms de ]'oalrr. dt &lin! LIIC l! I. m)'Sltrt modol (Ot!lW~: 5emin;alre ~im­
P~ul. 1979) .
39. Se~ )"""ph FIscher. DI. ""ldlscllt Abl(\!IIft.ltr Mu!t(!]esII (Vi~nnl.: A. Opill N~chfolger.
1910).
" 0, Lu k., 2:3
41 M~n. 1023: Is;. 70H
42. Luke 1:1-3.
43 ADB 4398-402 (&khud Plihmc~r).
44. CoL 4, 14; I Cor. 15: 8.
4S G~b Kr~ut, LukIlS mal!~. Mobwt. a..,uS5l l\lIIIl,i .... ltrischm SdbslYmlinllnis in da M<llad
(Worms: Weruersche ~rli8'gestllscllifl. 1986); ~ Imago Dri. pl. 22.
46. ttl: 6;618- I 9 (Karl Her!1li.nn Scbe] k) .
47. John 19;26-27.
i8. Orlgen COD>/IXJUGI)' IID./o" 1.6.
49. Luk., 2:35.
SO. H.,b. 11 ,38. I.
51. Rom. 10: 17, 1:5, 16:26.
52. Rom . 3: 28; I~mes 2:24
SJ. Heb. 1 108-12; Rom. 4: I: limes 2: 21 - 23 .
54. ROlli, 4:] 1.
55. Gen. 3:20,
S6. Luke 1:38.
57. Luke 1:48.
58. Man. 26:13.
134 NOHSTO'~CH/J'l!

Chap(cr 2 Tht Dcughltr of Zion

I Tbr c.thoIi( E.acytlGftdla. I S464E.

2_ The definlthe sludy of Ihls Issu( Is Henri d~ lUNC. f.xip mNiinlir: I.t< "",lit KOIS ok rem·
lure. 2 "lOIs Ln of (Puis Aubler. 19S9-M),
3. Brown el ~l • M.I)' In IN Ne-o' Tislamon. 29
4,luke24
~,M.'Iu J:J -J7;Lu keJ,U -J8
6. Luke J2J
7 Song of Songs 1_5 (Vg. AV)
8, Rodriguez.. Days 01 OIiIie-uOll. 16- 20
9,Gen 315
I 0_ lrenJ(u$ .... i~ Hc'<'$'IS Vxx, ]-1
1 I ' Tibor G,l.llus, Vir °fJOlu· in Gal 3: 15 ( KI'gcnfurt. Co.rinthl.... 1979),
12 Sec. t,g.. Ve,meet'slJltgot-y Dr llbt) Nllh ....1 ch'pl(r 6. below
I) PrO>' H,IO (vg)
14 L N_ ToJS(oy. Wa, aM Peller. Book I. ch. n (t" Ann Dunnig'n).
15. Edwin linch ... nd Hfilry A Rcdp ...!h. eels .. A COIICO,kncl 10 (lit S!p(~m!. 3 '·ob. (Oxford.
Clarendon P~. 1897 - 1906). 3' 108,
16 Ex. 15:20-21.
17_1s. 7:14: Man. 1;22-23,
18. luke 1;H
19, Mil! 12:46: M"u 13 :55: "b,k 3.31: John 2.12; John 7:3. 5
20. 1 COl. 9:5;G ... l 1'19
21. Song of Sollis 4 12 (AV, Vg)_
22_ Jerome i\jjII'RS! jowlfl,an 131
23 M.n 17'60: luke 23:53: John 19.41
14 Gal 2:7 (LXX)
25_ I Cor. 13,12,
26 Num 6:24-26
172Cot46
28 Ps 278_
29 ~n 2212
30 Murny. ".X.Irm 01 God. ,<;
31. Ex ].2. a
32. Is.!. 6.1. 21 2
33, Amos I-I: Oh.id, L N.h I I
H l2ek 11 14. Il,27,H:2.47.1;!nn,8,l.
35 Luk(3:2;Jonn l,a.Milt.II.I)
36. Acts 217: Joel 228
37 Act' 10:9- 16,
38. Aen 16;9, 18:9-10. 26;19
39. luke 10'18.
40, luke 21:43
41. Mil!. 1:20.1:11. 19,
+I. Re.... l:l3.
43. Rtv 12:1.
 NonSTOfAGfS1J·." 135

++ IImwn .... ' 01.1 . M~r~ in lilt New TISIOmln" 339

'IS. Rn Ii 6-7.
+6 s.,., Tht ChrislU.., Trodnion. 3:223-29.
+7.1':>.51;5.
48. Luke B:27
49 1501 25; 8 ; I Cor. 15,5<1
50. TI,,,ooore the Studile 0riI(1(I1IS V2- 3 (PG 99 72 1-7 H); ~ ,hOl.p'"r 15. below.
S I, Gen. 5:24. 2 Kmg~ 2: 11-l2.
52. ADS 2:508-26 (R.idl.l.rd S, He5S, Ge-orge W. E. Nlddsburg. Frillcis L AndelVJl).
B. ADS 2:465-69 (S1egfried S Johnson. Or~OI.l S. Wintermute).
54 Mm. 11:3.
55. luke 10:38 ,,2
56 Ps. 68:18; Eph 48.
57. John 1126.

Ch~pler j Th( Sccood Eve

I. ~ Ihe exhOl.u>h'~ colle~tion of Wllree nmcri~1 ror this ~nd subsequent chOl.p, .... "" In
Sergio Alvucz COI.Il1PO, cd., Corp!l! M.riGnum III1riuirum, S voh. (Burgos, Ald....mOl.. I 9 70-
S J).
2. Plito r..m, 709B (rr Benjamin 10"''I':u),
3. Con\l;lntine Dcspotopoulo,;. Philosophy"r Hillery in An<lml Gr<m (A then s: Academy of
Alhen~. 1991). 78-80
4 s.,c Norma Thompson. H('oOOl~ cnd the o.'8i1ll of I/o( i'oliliC<l] CommU/lhy (N ew H~ven md
london; Yile UnlvtrJily Press, 1996).
S Ex, 3.
6. John Ll, 14
7. Jim.,. 1:17,
8. MolKUS Aurchus MtJ'ltl,oru Xl! 1i (IT Ml.xwdl SwLifonh),
9. uno Clgnelli. Mo,io 11lIOI1I h. ndlG p"lriSliu i'a •. ..., II-'V (As-<;si; Studio ll'Ologl(O Poe.
zfun(ob.. 1966)
10. Gen. 3:5.
I l. Mill. 4;2· 3
12 Rom S: 12. IS.
13, 1 Cor, IS:45. 41
14. Iremeu!> ProofDf Ibt iIposKIIi( PrNd!,"II 33 (IT Joseph P Smilh. r""~) .
15. In Brown el il,. t.!dJ)' IQ Ibt N('A' l'eIGrntn,. 257 (itilie. iddro).
I 6. s.", Tlit Cbrisliu Trod,tlan. I: I 08- 20,
17. Gen. j:20
18. s.", chapler 6. bel",,'
19. Muy Chrl\lophet Pttheux. "The C011l;ept oflhc Second Eve In P"IUd':r L:tst:' PMLA 75
(1960); 3S9.
10. John Mlhonl'amd~ lOS! \(385-87.
1I. Milton Porudisd.ost X!l.319-lIl
22. s....c Tbt C~nlllGn TllJd,t,an, I: 1" 1-46.
13 I~iih ~rliJ\, "The Hcd!l~hng ~nd the Fox." in RlUS,on Th inkm. cd, Henry Hud) Ind
Ail"eJ\ Kelly (New Yort; Penguin Books, 1979). 22~81
24. Tolstoy. W~r Gnd 1'N<t. Second EpiJo!lue, (h 12 (lr, Aylmer and Loui<c Miude).
U~ ~0T!.5 TO .~r,H" "

25. Ch.rl~, Nom, Cochrane. Chmtj.n'tr"rId CIem",1C~I!"te (Oxford: CI.rendon Pres<.

1944). 483 - 84. S'''llm~m.ing me ~rgumcnt in Book XII of Augustine's Cily of God.
26. Iren.~us Proof of tM Apo>toli' Pr",ching 3 3 (lIT Jo<eph P. Smilh .•evised).
27 . I Co. 15:45.47,
28. Ginzberg.I.t~"<is of the Bible , :<x i
29. H. R, Smid, PmwUJlgdium jooo~i; A CommCllI~'y (Asscn; V'1l Goreum. 1975). i.\ useful and
b<.l,nced,
30. Brown et.\" M.IY in the Nt\\' Teslament, 248-49.
31. P' Wl-OIIjId of }ames 19:3-20. 17:20,92,
32. I,,,,,,eu, "",illli Htfesies I.\ii 2. lII,xU.
33. Gregor Mu tin Lechner. Moria C....'ido: Zurn SchwallQ",dofrsm<lfl' in cia biJdmim KlIII<l
(Munich: Schnell und St~ill~r, 1981).
34. Adolf "on Ham.ck. [Cnllld';<l daJ Dogmnljj<S<hicol. 4th ~d . (Tubingen: J. C B. Mohr [P.ul
SieDt,ckJ. 1905). 192. •
35, s"e ch.Ipt~r 4. bt,low.
36 M"tl. 4:3. 6.
37, 19n1.lius Ep"tl, to tn. T",llions 9.
3 8, A usdul correni"~ On sll.ndord interprelations of MOZH!'~ rel~<Ion to religiom bith is
Hom Kung, MOlOn: TlOc.. of TroJlS(md<llQ, \r, John Bowden (London: SCM Prc.". I 992).
39jaro,l.v PeJihn. ChriSli(!llity and CI.«ira l Culiu,,; The M'lOrnorph",j, of NOlurol Tbtology in !.hI
Christion EIlCOlJnt(r with Hcllmiilll (New H~ven , nd London; Y41~ University Pre... I 993),
328.
40 Luke 23:16.
+ 1 . • p.Jren~ells "'8<liMl HII ..i.. Lxxiv.4.
42, Vi'gini. Corwin. St. igno li ", all<i Chri,ti"oity io Mli •.:h (New H.ven: y.le Univ,,,.ity Pre".
1960). 170.
+3, s~ the tI.ble in Sch,ff. 1:53.
H, Schaff. 1:53.
45 .• p.lrenaen, ltglinsl H".. i.. l. vii. 2
'1-6. Tertulll.n Ago''''1 Mor""" 1ll.xL
47. Richud Croshaw, "The Sh~phe.ds· Hymn." in Th, Nt\\' Oxford 800k of En91i<h Vmt. IHO-
1950, ed, Helen Gudner (Oxford: Oxford Umversity Pr~ss. 1972) , 314
48.1""'9" Dti. 129, 71
'1- 9. G.egory of NysSI. AgoIIISI Evn(lllH'" rv.3 (I'G 4, :637).
50. Se e the d,s.cus.\ion ofmese ,iews in WUliarn P Hl.Ug~.rd , "'Arlus: T"~Le. Heretic'
Arills and the Humm s.oul ofeh.iSl."' Church History 29 (1960): 251-63.
5 L Quored by I,en.eus ~inst H,,...-i .. ll!xxxLI.
52 . John of Damascus On H""irs 3 I (I'G 9 4: 697).
53. P~ter Rokrt Llmom Brown. Th, Body and Soci<!y: Mm. lMJm"" and St,..,1 R","""iofjon in Mny
Chrj,llClnily (Ncw York: Columbi .. 1Jnh'erSlly Pres'. 198 8). I II - 14 ,
54. Ignatius Epistl. to lb. Tr.lli.1ll ix, 1.
55. Gal. 4:4; see chapler I. "bove .
56. Gen. 3;20 (LXX).

Chaptu 4 Thf Throtokos

l. J~Dd. 134- 38
2. Liddell-Sco\!-Jones, 792 . cite, no pre·Chri'li .." itl$'ance of it.
 "OTUTO'AGH~~ - U 211

3. Ath.o.nulU$ OI1lUOllS "E"11Ilt tM AnOlH 111.251 (PG 16:385) .

... Guido Muller, ed., Luiron Ar~an",I""WIl (!lerlin; Walter de GrUyler. I 952), 6S I).
S. Juli~n ....'IlM the Galibns 261,
6 Theodou. Jenny· K~pl"'n, Muntrpiu.i.o. 11M GOlltlll1uUa iu frben; \1m ArtcmI. ru MOrM
(Zurich: Inimon. 1986).
7. Acts 19:23-41.
8, Coundl of Ephesus (Tanner. 59).
9 Culo Pietrangeii, Scmla Malia M"9lliOlt. Rom. (Flor=ce; N~rdim, 1988).
I O. John of D)nWC\l.~ T1w Ortboa: foit~ 1lI. 12 (PG 94; 1029-32).
1 1 john of ~ 0",1ioni on tK Holy Irons 11. 11 (PC 94: 1293-96).
12. Theodort the Studile On 1M IPlIJf'3 I (PC 99:489); set': Chipter 7. below
Il. Dtffiopmml of C~ri'ljcm Doc:lr;lI<!: .\(nnt Hi'lorirul Pro/(gommo, I OS -19.
14. Hugo ~llller, "Hippolyt von Rom als Zeuge fUr den Ausdruck Theotokos." ZtllxMifr
rw- UlhoIis<:br TMoIogit 59 (1935); 73-8 1 See the diSOluion and bibliogriphy in w"lltT
Burghardc. "Mlry in Eastern Pillistic Thoughl." in <:Mol, ed .. Moriolosy; 2, 117. n. 147.
1S John Henry Newman, Art Essay Q\ lho o..dopmml of CIui";"" Domine, 6th ed., Foreword by
lin Kerr (Notre D>.me.lnd.: UniversilY of Notre Dame Press. 1989), 145.
16. Alexander of A1enndrli fplsrlt w Ala.oo.r of C<ta!:lllluiooplt 11 (PG I 8, 5 68) .
17. S<:e. ~g.. Amold 1 Toynbce ..... SlIlIi)' 01 Hi5IOf)\ 11 vois.- (Oxford: (ftford Univenlty
Press. 1934- 61), 7-B:717
18. Burghardt, "Miry in Easl~rn Patri~i<; nLought.~ in Carol, ed., M.riology. 2:120.
J 9. Atbanl.<iu! Oroti<lll5 J.aollllll the A1i~nl 1lI. 29 (PG 16: 38S).
21). Tbe controversy Is wei! summ~rized In Alo)'s Grillmeiel. C~ri<l in ChlUliGD ThoUVhf: from
1M Ap00t06r ..... to C1IAIccdoa (451). tl.). S. Bowden (New York, 1965), 193-119, wme
most or Ih.. rec;.:m hter~lure IS discm.sed.
21. Drc 7·1:595-602 (Amon Michel).
n. I John 1:1; Act:< 20:18,
13 Gri!1m~iu, C~ri$l in CMiltian Tboug/tl, 357.
2-ol. Pbill:S-7.
15. AtlumsiU$ 0""1_ ,'flEgq tilt AliallS 1.41 (PG 16; 100).
26. Athm~iu$ Droll",", Aj,uinst tbr AriGM 1ll.2? (l'G 26:385).
17. John Henry Ne ..... mon, "'The Orlhodoxy of tbe Body of the F~lthful during lhe Su·
pr<:m~c)' of Al"ianism." Nott V to Thf Arillll.l 0/ the fuLll"th Cmlu?\ 3d ed. (London: E.
lumley, (871), 451-- 71; the note originoil1y ~ppured ~! ~ stpitite ;Ulicle In 1859.
28 Bern~rd CapeUe. "Autorlt~ de llliturgie chez Ie!; Peres. ~ R«/t.udKs«!hiolotIif _kline d
mtdiaul.22 (19$4); 5-U.
29. Cf. Georg Ludwig. ,\tho1llllJI eplstula o.J Epic((um Oem.: Pohle. 1911). a careful textual
im.lyili: o n the rolt of the epistle 10 EplCtel\l$ it Eph~us ind Ch.kedon. 12-25. Lud.
wig's textual ob<erv;l!ions are supplemented by Hans-Georg Opit<. UntcmKhwtgm DIr
~ dcr SeMi/teD oks Ar.""-ill> (Buli n w..Iter de GroYler, (935), 171-74.
30. cf. Gnllmeier. Cbris! in ChmlJOD Tbooghl. 204-5. 11 4-17, on the signi6Cin~ of the
Epi<lit (0 fp!c\(IIII.
31. A!b;m~"us lplnk 10 Epictn.1lI 9 (PG 16: 1064)
31. A~lIS EplStk iii EpiCltlIll 4 (PC 26: I 056-57).
33 A~,us EfbIk to MuimLlS (lit Phlb.opha 3 (rG 26; 1088) .
34. Sc:echapttr 3, dx)Ve.
lS. In 1. Petcr I: I 5, 1m tOUlOn mnlnLln PJiristnoJ Is mnsLned "to !"«ill the.e tbings.··
138 ~'OTEI TO PAGES 60-.~

36. Rml Erinl" 93 (PC n~H).

37, Scech~pter 15. bdow,
38, Martin JUglC. "La prcrni~rc /e[e nuri.lc ttl Oricnt Cl en Occident: l'A,'em primlllf."
«hood'Ori"'t n (1'n3):129-52,
39 MUlin Jugie. La moll .ll'=rnf'lwn dt 10 Soiw V.. rge. Elu4t nislO,ico iIoclI[MI. (V~!it~n Cily'
StudieTcsli.19H).172- 112
40 Gr>~f, Mary. 1;133-38
4 1, Ath,nasiu< 0101'0'" Ago.lISt 1M Allo", 111.29 (PG 26 385).
42, A,hanaslU' Epistle to Epi<ttl<lS 12 (I'G 26; I 069),
43 Heury Mdvill~ GWdtkm. Sli!di" 01 AIi."isrn (Cimbridgc' Cimb"dgc U,,,,'crsJl)' Pres"
1881),265,
H. QHot~d in A,h;m~sius OWI,O<\$ .'rf:Iuullh. Anons!.5 (PC 26:10),
45. GW~lkin. StuJies 01 Ati~n'lIll. 134-35, n. ],
46 . QUOted m Athanasim On In. COlJDCi~ 01 Ariminum '04 SdN<i~ 16 (PC 26:709).
47. Athanasill' 0.1."", 01 th. Nktnt u..fI<iI9 (PC 25:432),
48. Blll Stt Willi.", I': H.uggnd. "Arim: Twic~ a Heretic' Arills ~Hd the Humln Soul of
J~m' Cl,ri'I," Church Hi,rory 29 (1 960): 25 1- 63 .
49 Athanosius On 1M CowlClb 01 Atirn inum anJ Sdm;iG 26 (I'G 26 J 19),
SO Q\loted In Theodorel Ecdeia,ti,al HjIlOI;' L 12- 13.
51. Alh.n",iu, Oralio", Ago''''1 tho Atioru 1043 (PC 26: I 00).
52 . Athanasius On tn. locof"",i"" of tM Wo,d 54 (PC 25 : 192); d. Jaroslav P"hhn. Tilt U9"t 01
lh, W()~d A &.k Image in tori), nfi>liQn Thoush t (N~w Yor~: Harper ~nd BrO!h~rs, 1962).
120,11 11. 18-21.
53, Newman. {""yon ,h, [hd"pm<nt of Chnsfl." Doclri"e. I 38-39. lOm~in' c~,uin ,ugg"'-
tions of this lmc of development
54 Arlolf Vun Har"a~k. uh,buch d" Dogrn"'S""hkht., 5,h ~d .. .3 vols. (Tiibingen. J. C. B.
Mohr [P~ul SiebeckJ, 1931). 2:477
S5. Atb.n~,iu, Utl<r 10 tn, Yir~ill$.
56. M.urice Gordino, MQrio!o:gi. Orimtoli, (Rome; Pontifinl Instit\ltc of Oricnt~l Studies,
1954). 7-8 , n , S6: Gerard Gilb Mttrsseman, 0., Hymoos AA'ihiltOl im A!>mcUand
(Freiburg in de, Schweiz: Unjvers!t~ls-Verl.g. 1958), 1,14-1 S.

Chuptn 5 The Hnoine of lh~ QUI'an

I I.TK 8:613 (M.x Bierb.um),
2. Sec ch~p'£r 8, beluw,
3. Eli.\.!>elh Oa. Tltomill MmOll, GttnlgO"9'r ru'i!(hm Chrislmluffi OIJ)J BudJhi""u, U!>.r do, Y"hiltnij
von Sdb>t"fahnUl9 und Gone!>.il'W'u"g (Wiirzburg, Echter Verl~g. 1977).
4. This semence ""d the b •.bnce of the p~,agraph are >d.p' cd from mI' "Imroouction"
to lhe Qur '.n in Ja,,,,I~,' Pelihn. cd .. Socrtd Writings, 6 vok. wilh mmp~nioll voh'm~.
On S..rching tb. Sc r;PI"'~~YO"r 0.,-" D' Solm""" <1,,'1 (New York: Book of the Momh Club.
1992). 3:~iv.
5 Qur'in 21:107 -8.
6. I ~m. throughom lhis eh.pter, following [he rr.n~la\ion of th~ Qur'~n by the I~te
PlKj,!ani pc>C1 ~nd schoLle Ahmcd Ali, ,,·hlclt l Iud lhe pr"'ileg~ ofinmrpordring Into
lhe w llemon Samd Writing,.
7. Gcn 3:20.
 I<OTHTO~~G!S"_I' 239

8. YVOnn~ Y. H~dd~d OlIld Jane I. Smith. ""The Virgin Muy in Isumic Tradition ~nd Com-
mmt;try." Muslim WOOd 79 (l989): 162.
9 . .'kechapt~r 1. ~~.
10. Ludwig Hagermnn. Marla, Gil Muun}eru, i~ Bibd unci ICoWl (Wiirzburg: Echter Verl;tg.
1992).
II. N~l Robinson. -Jesus ;l.nd Mil)' In Ih~ Qur'an: Some Neglected Affinities." Rdigitlot 20
(1990): 169-7l.
12. Qur'in 66: 12.
13. ~;tlso Nilo Gelgea, Mel)' of tht Korort. tr UYl-Tmce T. ~ (New York: Pbllosophlal
lJbruy, 1984); C. H. Beeker. ClulAicnlty and hIam. 11". H J ChYlor (New York: Burt
Franklin ReprinlS, 1974). 22
14. ADS 3:889 (P-..ul W. HollenbKh)
IS. Qur'in 19:12.
16. Gen. 21:18 .
17. Qur'in 3:42-43.
18. Luke 1:32-33.
19. Qur'in 3;45-46.
20. Norrmn Cohn. The l'I.I~lt 01 !be Mj]knruum (New York: Ac;o.demy Libruy, 1969).
II. Luke 1:34.
n. G<:n. '4<1,25 .
D. Qur'in 3:47.
H. Lu ke 1:37.
IS. Luke I:H.
26 . Gen. 16:6, 11 :9-2!.
V . see chapter 3. above.
28. Qur'ln 19:16,41,51.
29. R. Tr;tver$ Herford. Cb,lSti@;lylniolmudClldMid,a<h(NewYork: Kt.lv Publishing Hou~.
1975).358.
30 N.]. 0.."'-000, ed. and Ir., Thr 1Co..,., 5th ed rev. (London: I'erIguin Books. 1995). 215.
n. I.
31.]ohnl : 17.
32 Moll_ 17:3.
33. QuI'in 14:39.
34. Qur'in 5:78.
35. Banbolomew of Edess:.. Mu .. u.on of tilt HOfII""" (I'(; 104; 1397).
36. Norm:m O;tnlel. bIom CIId IM~: Tht MAkiDt of an 1..... (Edinburgh' Edinburgh Uni"",-
sity Pr6s. 1960), 175.
37. Qur';in 19:35.
38. see chlpler 6, below.
39. Qur',in 19:11-
4{l. Qur'in 5:75.

41. Pbdd]. Podipan, MltioIotr oil/!( East (KeU.ll. India: OriemallnslitUte of Religious
Studies. 1985).
41. See. e.g., Charles Bc:lmOfllt. Aba ,Inoo~ MGlit : 1Iw Vi'sm Ml'y in fbiliPl'iIl< An (MOlIlil.o.: Aba
Ginoong Muh Foundation, 1991».
43. See ch;tpter 13. below.
H. Song of Songs I;S (Ir. M~rvin Pope); sec ;tlso Ch~Plcr 2. abov~ .
2-10 "uT ES TO PAG, S n ·11

-15. Se~ th~ tn~ss,w illuS!r~te<l study of Stanislaw ChojnackI, MOJo! rhrnt" In Et/Il"l"OIl !'Gmm'!!.
IOOill'1lOII.l r>mJopmrnt<. Ih, Influ""", o( lim,s" Mood.<. and Their A.JapIO(;"" (rom Ib, Thlflltllln 10 In,
Ni"'I""ln Cenlu,)' (Wicsl».dcn F St~in~r. 1983)
-16 Mari~ Dur~lld-L~febvr~ , flU"' ,ur i'onai'" d" Vi,'9" noir" (Paris: G. Dur".,iC. 193 7),
-17. MarY,n H. Pop<:. So"'8 vf Songs: A New TrolllJoltOll wilh lnlrod,,'ioo 000 CQffimrnloly (New York
Doubl~day, Ig77), 307~18
48. A. j, Dejattr~. Lt ",lI, d, I. Soinl' Vi,'S" rn Afn~u,' d·opri • .b moouffiml.< .f(h~iq"e:; (Puis: So-
c"'le SI Auguslin. 1907),
49. "bri. Tamaw,h. I\tJcmd th, Kinsdom of Mary, {T. Ros.mund B.tchelor (Lo".", Bullingham.
Ikrdord: Zgronuzdcnie hitzy M.. i~now. IgS2).
50 Sec .Iso chapter 9. btelow,

Chaptu 6 The Handma id of thr lord

I, A 'pcci~lizcd ,mdy in arr hiSl()ry. which on clus~r eX~I!lillation tlIms olll 1101 10 l>e ru
sl"'ci~h~cd ~fter ~ll. is Don Den'lIY. Tilt Nlnuocioti"" from In. RiSk From Eorly ehri";o" Time:;
to Ill' Si\umth Cmtury (N~w York, Gael.nd , 1977).
2. Irn~lJ(i. I3I - H
3. David M~lhelly Rubb. "The Iconography of the Annunciation in the FOIm~~llth .nd
Fifteenth C~ntury." N I B"II,t in 18 (lg36): 480 - '>26.
-1-. S~ {h~ wmnwllts ~nd bibllogr~phy in Allee B~nk. Byronlln, NI In th, Co)]«li""" O{S".... I
MUSNm,. tr l~njna Sorokin •. 2d ed, (L ~niug ..d: Aurora An Publi,h~r<. 1985). 28g.
S, Fronk Edward Brighamn. ~d .. liturgic. I.mrn 000 ",«urn. YO!. I : Ea.'tern L""[gier (Oxford:
a ..
cndon Press. ISg6). 31S-32 0
6. On iI. pl~ce in the Gospd mdition. See Lucien Legrand, L'Annonc;.'; Mori, (L< 1. 26 - 38):
U", opo<olyp" O!IX ori~in" d, n ....!ljjil, (Paris: C~rf. 1981).
7. John 1: 14.
g, John 1: 14 (Vg).
9,G.J.44
10, X~y;"r Leon-Dufour, '"L" Anllonce ~ Joseph:' in Iluik< d""""9ik (Puis: s.,uil, 19 6 5). 6S-
8 1.
11, Ll1ke J .38.
12 I-S.l 45;9. 6-I:R; ROil). g; 21
[3, E.g,. Rom . I:l.
14, LTK 9:69 5-96 (Remigiu~ B.iumcr).
IS. PhiL 2:6-7.
16 Jocl 3;2: Aus 2: j 8.
17,Aml:14.
18. Sterling Smckcy. "Through d,e Prism of FollJor~ Th~ BI~d Elhos in Sl~yery.·· in Amtr-
t(gi Black Post, roo Eric Fon~r (New York: HaTp~r and Row. 1970). 79.
I 9. Gre~ory of Nyssa fplS~« 3 (rG 46: I 021).
20. Rich"d Gr,ffi{h,. cd .. Cloudd: A Reo~~roi><tl (London: R.pp ~nd Whilin~, 1968). S
2 I. H~ns Urs yon s...hh.,u, ThNdrolM. Theoloaicol Drl1lTlo!i, Thatry, tr. Gralum H.rrison (~n
Funci.co: Ign.!ill.\ Pre"" 1992).300.
12.2 King>< 19:35
23. Gregory of Ny,,,, On ilK Mol<i"!l of Mon 23 (I'{; 44 :2 12).
H. Luke 1: 38.
25 S'-'" ch~pter 3. ~bovt,
 26. tren~eus .-'If!im( HunI" Vxb.1 . Although Wrlffen in Greek. this trOifiSo: is prese
rved in
i(~ eml~(r only In I u.tin {roulslulon: henc e t.he utln
term~ In this ql.lot.llion.
27. Augustlnc On (Il! P(IC"L<di"9l' of PtiOSiu:l 20.H .
28 Atls 9:1- 3I, 22:] -]6, 26:9 -H:G <ll.1 :l1-1 .o4.
29. Kristcr Sl~d~hl, III,.] ofllOllQ }tws ~Dd Gm(iks (Phi llddp hll; Fortress
Press, ]976 ) .
30. Augus{ine ConlaiiOftj Vlll xli.29.
31 Rom _l3. 11-H .
12. Augusfine ConfOSlions VIl.ui,27_
33. Rom. U7 (Vg)
14 LUlbu; WQB,:; Tilt Amaiam £,IIIlOll. ed. J~I~v Pelih n lnd Hdm ut
Lehm wn. 55 vols_
(So.i!l! Louis ould Phi] ad.,Jphla: Concordia Publishing House lnd Foru
ess Prc~s,
1955 -), H:33 7.
35_ Mui mus Confessor Qu.5tions (0 Tbolo~ius 61 (I'G 90;( 37).
36. On this coue er t. see ch ~pter 7. belo w
37 _ urs Thunberg, MiCfllW!m W M<d1.tOX: Th< TItdoaIW AnlluopoJosy tI Muim
us Ill< CanffSll)f
(Lund, C W. K. G!tt nlp. 19(5 ).1-5 7-45 8; ul!iC'lhls.
38. B.lsll Episda 223.3.
39.1'G 31:5 63-9 0.
-ro. Pclih n. ChriSiianlty IIld Cl4mc.] CoiruR.
4\. Luh 1:18.
H. urnp e, 15]9 .
43. 2 (or. 6;1,
44. Luke L48
45.P rov3 110 (Vg )
46. Gen. 3:]5 (Vg).
47. E. F Sutcliffe. MJcromc:· in Tht C_mbndf' HI5IOfY 01 (hr 8,bk The Wc!I:
lrout tht FGtltm f(I the
RtfonDdUon (Cm thrid gc: Ct.mbridge University Press, ] 9(9) . 98-9 9
48. The Cnri$(i!IIl 1IoditiOll, 3:7 1. 166_
49 M.lty CII)·l on, Tbc Cult 01 !bE Vi.p MOlY in • •s.w.. &.gland (Colimbridge:
Cnnb rldge
University Press. 1990 ).
SO. Bed~ Cornmmto,y ClIt GCPltSis 1_
5 I. Ambrosius AUlpcrcus CoIomtnI4<y ClIt tht ApooIIypsr 2.
51. Its evolution h...~ been de!;Crlbed ~d documented by Fran z (Le~nd~r]
Dr~w nju, Oit
tIICIrilliosisclK !XulupS "'" Gm. 3; IS in dtr lIi(mril (Brc slu R_ Nisc:hows
k y. 19 H); see llso
NI(hol.s Perry ~nd lo",( () Echevcrri.l, Undrr tilt Hm of M"'1 (London: Rout
ledge.
1988).
53. ~rnud oro..;rvOlux In Laud 01 w Villi;" M"III1:1 2.4.
H. Arthur K. Wh~lock. Jr.• lnd Ben Broos. ·'The CoIitt logu c:· jcmllM
Vrrm«r (Wt.!hlngton,
nc., ~lld N~w Ha~c)\ : N~t1()!!~I GOillery of Arc md Yale Univenily Press
. 1996 ). 190.
55. John Mid uel MOIltin. Vrrmttf """ His Mdint; A Wrio 01 Social Hmory (Prin
ceton. N.].:
Prlllcetoo UniverSity Pr~s, 1989 ). 119.
56. See Eugene R. Cun nn, ··The Vicwu's 5hue · Thr"" 5c(tlri~n Rud
ings or Vermeer's
Woman HoidrnS a &du rt:' E>lnIjrIalMl 2 (199 0); 50 1-36 .
57.IS .I.40 ,15.
58. Tht D«wnmtl Qf Viltic(lII II. 00. W~her M. Abbott (New York: Guild
Press , 19(6 ), 85- 96
59. Sec dupl er 13. helow.
60. The CbriSiion Trodi{iOll, 3;] 62.
242 NOTES!OPAGES!l-IO!

6LNumH;17.
61. Elm! Rooot Curtius, Europ<On lJlrr01Uf< <I!Ia lb, umn Middle AgIs. If. Wi\l~fd R. Tr~sk
(Princeton. NJ: Princeton U niven;lty Press, 1953). I 29.
63. F. /. E. IUby, 00 .• Th! O..t,uj BooI;. of Mtdi('.ll! Larin 1m! (Oxford. Clorendon Press. 1959). 94.

ChaplC! 7 Thr Adornmml of Worship

1. s..,., chapttl 6. ~buve.
1 Ps. 68:25
3. Augustine rxpositwllS on Ih! Book of holrru 67 . 26
4. Louis Bouytl, "Le tulle de ~lrie dlns l~ liturgie byzantine." Moison -Oi"" 38 (19 54) .
122 - 35.
S. umpe, 57 .
6. Aleundra Pilwld. On Ma l hi$l~-b~: Oie BilJmykkn in drr ~ru>"lIni$(h"" W.Ddmokltl d..
14. ..,hrn"ndm:l (Stuttgm . F. Stei'1er. 1989).
7. Muime Gorce. L, """'ire (\ '" .nl"'farnl' l"'IOfl~'" (P.ris: Editions .i. Picard , 1931).
8. OED "B" 714. with mmy eumples.
9 UK 9 :45 - 49 (Gumer Lanczkowski. Angdus Walz, nhrt Sauer, and Konrad
Hofmann) .
10. orc 1: 12 7 3-77 (U .. mer Berh ~re) .
1L Luke 1:26-28.
12. Imago Dei. 137-45.
13. Vaslliki Limt>o,ris, Oi.in< Heim:;: Th! Virgin MOly.1I<I Ihe Crllll/Oll of Cbri~tiil/l Corul""lioopit
(london: Routledge. 1994).
1'1-. Nicephorus Ref"totiQn 11.4 (PG I 00: 341 ) .
15. Nicephurus Refutation 1.9 (PG 100 :2 16).
16. Wuren Treadgold, Th, BYlClntinr RevJ""] (St .. nford, Cllif: St .. nford University Press.
1988),88
17. John of Dlm~scus Orutioru 00 tb! Hely lcQIIS I. 14, JILl 7 - 28 (PG' 94: 1144. 1348-49) .
18. Lompe. 408 (including mgnalcs).
19. LUle 23 :46
20. ActS 7 :59.
21 . phil. 2:10- 11
n . Den:z.inger. 301.
23. Jolm of Damascus Orations- OIl Int Holy Icon< III. 17 - 2 8 (PG 94: 13 48-49) .
24. Augustine Cily 0/ G.:wl X. 1.
25. umpe. 384, 793.
:! 6 Augustine COIlfm,on< Lxiii 2O - xiv. 23 .
27. AugusllIle On lilt TrimlY VILvi.ll.
28. IJdddj-SlOti-Jones. 1518.
29 Ch . rles Diehl, "BYZl.n\;ne Civi1iz~lion." In Tilt Combr;~ M.,jitvlll Hmof)'. vol. 4 (Clm-
bridge ; Ctmbridge University Press, 1936), 755
30. The . mbiguily appe.u s ~Iso in earlier English u~ge, for eumple in the Authorized
VNsion of Luke 14: 10 : "Then ~h.lt thou h.ve ",""hip in the presence of th em Ihal m
II me.1 With thee."
3 1. DTC 3: 1404-17. esp. 1406-9 Oem-Arlhur CholJel).
31. Defernri-Bury, 346, 627 - 28, 494.
33. Se., chapttl 11. below.
 N()ni'()'''<;Ul~l~l. Hl

34. Oo!mosthenao ~vmnis, "Da' ~rgLiublkbt MiBbr.luch der

Bi)d a in Brun z. ~ 011:-
k)rdlli~ Siudim 9 (] 960) : ] 74-9 2,
35. Thw dore lhe Siud ue Orolioos XJ.jv.H (I'G 99 828)_
36 Chri stop hu Wi.lIU, ~1\o,'O NOtes on Ihe [)eesls, ~ IIMH; .z
",!Ida bymmilllS 26 (] 968) ,
316- 36,
37. Udde ll·So )U-Jo nes, 372.
38 Soph ocles , 347_
39. ump~, 334.
40. u.mpe, ] ] .....
41. Stt Cyril MlIlgO, M~!mGIs fof 1M Study of tlx MO:ItIic:I of Sf Sopluo Q! 1$!llflb
ul (Was hing lon,
o.C Dumb-orIoll Olks , 1962 ), 29,
4 2, Mill . II-L3 ,
43 Justi n Momyr Dialogu< Kirh Tl}"J'fto 51 (PG 6;58 9),
44. Ther efore me Greek lerm wu used in POIT1Slic Gredc both for
lhe lIlIlu ntiui on 10
ZedI.uWl (lllke 18-2 3) md for 1m, AnJIun<:Wton 10 MMy (Luke 1:26- 38): Lunp
e, 559.
45, Gregory of Nyss.t On Virsjnlt~ 6.
46. Mm . 1 L:11; Luke 7:28 (NES)_
41 . Greg ory or
NySSl. On VirgInlty 2 (fIG 46; 324) ,
48. See chapler 8, below.
49. Anders Nygr eo, Aflpt GIld EIO!. IT_ PhILip S WaISOll. (PhL laddp hh
WesunlnSler Press,
]953 ),41 2.
SO. L Biel~r, T/I(io. IIlir:
I:Ijld da -gOlclicbco MlJlI(hm- ill SpiiICUltiko WId FrijbchriSlm!wn. 2 mls.
~
(Vi.:nn_r Q HOlds, 1935 -36) .
51. um~, 649- 50,
52. Nygr en, Af'p<.m ErO<, 734
53. Bocl hius Tht C_kuiOll of Philoqohr ULpr_x 13-2 5.
54 Ps 82:6 ,
55_ John 10'3 5.
56 1. PHer 1;4.
57. MhlfllSiu5 Oralioos AqlillS! 1M Ar;<tm liI. H (PG 1. 6; 313.
58. lOUin B. Siro u, Dit JkImg.~ dn Gollam~([... j~ cia Ruwl<hm Ollw .b
... K1rdx: Iomuth .......
Sysltl!lGlJSlflung (WUnburg; Der dl/"IKllch~ Omn . 1992 ).
59. J~m", M~rns, TM CIlntklos of til< Ch';l~olD Chutdl EastU1l <I11d W(S(U
n In Earl~ <IDd Mtditval Tuna
(Cimbridge; Cirmbridg~ Universily Press, ] 91-4).
&0. Pill!. 2,6- 1.
6 I. WillilIl1 Locrke. ". Real Pr"'~nc~' in Euly Chrlsli;m All," MooaSildsm
<IDd 1M Arts. eel.
Tunoffiy Georg~ Verdon (Syr.cru;e. N Y.; Syn.~ UmVft";ly Press. 198-4
), -47,
62. John of D~mlSCU~ Orations on rlx Hol~ !cons I1.15 (PC 94'1 301)
.
63 . Doro thy G. Sheph~rd, "An loon of lhe Virghl: A SiJ,m-Century
Tlpc stry I'<IncJ from
Egyp!,~ Sullrtin of !lit CIr,dGnd MIl\IfWII of All 56 (Mar.
::h 1969 ): 93
6't. James H, Slllbbl~bln~, "Two S)7-~nt;ne Madonnl~ from Cll~.horn, Sp<lln," Art Bulltlin
48 (196 6): 379- 81.

Chapter 8 The I'Ilragon of Cha!tJ!y

L Luke I il_
l. Bern hMd Lohse.1I$krsr uod MDadmmlin dcr Milk! wid In dtr a1tm Kircb.
(Munlch: R. Old =·
bourg. 1969 ).
2H "UTB TO f~Cts ". ' ! I

3, LUllpt!. H4
~ M.n:", AUfeh", Mahtau~ II 17 (If \hxw.. n S... niforlh),
S. Allow .n, Eph biD · 17; bu, ~>U I Tim 6: 12 ~nd 2 Tlnl 4 7.• nd OIh~r pl.<"",,
6. I Cur 9 2+-27
7. Pluw<h PoI.lId L....s.1'owna, 10.
8 J~,osl.v ~lihn. Tbt h,dlau £mpm Tbr Fall of Rom.. <InCI1~ Tnompll of Ih. Chu«b (K~' York
Hilpt'T lIld Row 1987). ~9
9, ~~r Ro~n Llmom Brown. Tbt Body.nd Soo"r Mm. "bmtn. ad Saull RcDIIII<l.JOD ID farly
Ch,Ul.antty (:-J.-w York Colunlhii UlUv~rs!l)· ~. 1988).
10, 1'UI1}, b'2,
II, Ju<lg~ 11,5,
11 Philo On ~ht Comanpl.llu't bit 68 (u. C. D. Yongt),
13. I:u~bius Eerlolll(>(ol H'II01) II l\'l( 18 ·19 (U" Anhur CushlIU.n ML-Giff.. n. Sr.).
1 4, Ath.mi~iu~ Lift of Nlton) 5,
15. Augu ... UlC Coni«sioM \'tu "I 14 ·1 S.
16, n.-dop"lt.u III Chnll>dn Doo,,1It Sotr.o WIt"",,1 Prokpntna, 100- 104,
17, Pel~r llrown. AlJ9USlHltQJ Hippo (I "",don F.ber. (969), 1H,
18. Jerome Epjuies I 27,5,
19. JeromtEputln 108.33,
20. Jerom~ EplnJes 108,20,
2l. Sec Pellhn. E.mIlml fmpllt, i3-S 2
n Jerome EpJl IJrI 128.3.
13, Johannes QUtsl .. I) , P':l!ru!o&r, 4 'ul., (Wc5l!nillSlcr. Md., Ncwm .. n Press ind Chrlsliil1
CI"';,lcs. 195 1 86), 4 23 9: !h .. !Iei\i.e ippeus PL 23: 2 I 1-13 8.
24 ]aoillc A.gl j ~ HII... ,dlus 2,
25, Jnoll1~ ASO'II5! Hd"dull I Z,
26 s.,., chlple, Z, lbov ...
l7 Jc'umc ¥"..I Htl,jd,us 16
28 ip,J~lom~ .'161 Hd\',dl~s 20,
29. I Cor 7, L-2. 38
30. Jer<)mt "","" 11d."hws 22
31. J~lOme ItfiJllSl 1kh-,d,1IS II,
32. l"fOlI1~ A.fI,1IlI Hd",d,1IS Z I.
33. jostph Iluhn. D.rI GdIt,mnll dn Jomi",~-M~I!l' Mal. ""~ okm KirCbcmotl<l AmIoII/IIIIS
(WUllburg f.ducr Vt,lig. 1954),79-80
H SeedU.pl~1 14. below
3$. Amhro<.e fplnks 63 III
36, AmbroKfI"II1ts6J,1,
31, Qul>len, l'II!fology. 4 161.
38 Amb~ Cohm";nt V1'B11IS IUi6
39, Amb~ Col'a,ft1nt Vj~11II" II iI, 15.
4 (). W J DooIe)', Mm,.II«Ofdlllf 10 51, Amb,O!( (W.shing!{)II. nc c..tholic Univ.nhy of
Am~rlci, 1948)

~ 1, Ambr<»t '" ,,'S,nlbus ", ii. 9

4 2. Amhl05~ I)( "IQ,mbus 11.;1.8-9
43. Eph 5 12.
H. s,,~ TIt. eli rul ;a" Trod; lIOn. 3 2 1 I - I 2,
 NOT ESTO ,,,GE S ' 1 '_19 14S

+5 . jobn Ruw n. GIOUo..nJ HIS 'MKb 'D 1'adIIo' fkmg an EIpIwortory NOliC
f of Lb. Sriies of w..w"ts
E>«vu:d 10, l~ ArunJd SoOO-y A.fut the Ft<SOXS in the A.rmo COOPt! (Lon don' Arun
del Society.
1854 )
46. S«: ch.J.pl:er 10. J:><,low.
47. lTl( 5: ] 140- 4] (J~eph Wenner).
-48. joh" 2: 1-] l.

Chapter 9 The Motu Dolor(lSO

1 Ernst Robe n Cun iu,. E.,,,,I""'" lI.t1IIlult and rho Ul:Jn Middk ........ tr wnb
rd R. T=k
(princeton. N.J.: Pnnceton University Press. 1953 ).59 8.
2 Ch.i.rles Hom er Huk ill., . Tilt Rmli",,1ICf of tht 1Wdflh Cauury (New
Yorke: Mcri dim 8001:...
J 957) .
3. Ouo von Slm$On. ~ Gotbk c,,11Kdn.l: On9im of GOlh;, A.uhilrc,urr and
Order (New York: P~nthwn 8ooks. 1956). 172.
.fi.
Mo:di<>al CoJIlOCfPl of

4. M. Kofrbovi. C&< fOClw lJooioD~ phOlognphs by V. Fym tn (Pr~l,le

: Ch.ullt. 1985 ).
5 Luke 2:35.
6. ~c 11$0 duP let 15. below.
7. John 19,25- 26.
8. Rahy. Oxford Jl.oo.k of MIIl, ..... l La!in Vir«. 435.
9. A~ry Thomas Sharp. "'A Descrlp,ivc Cm.l og ofSelec"ed. Published Eighteent
h-
lhtou gh Twe ndff il-ce mury S,~ba., Mne r Sctrtngs for Mi~ed VoIcc-s.
with l Diocusslon
of the History of the Tex'"" (Ph.D. diss,. Univ enity of low~. 1978) .
1O. joh~nn v.blfg~ng von Goethe. """". 3588 - 9S
1 1. See chlp ter 11. below.
12 . Sec ~Iso chaplcr 5. above.
13_ Smd ro StkCi. ~ ·Plonctus Mell.." ia .... DmnwtK TllIIiillllD 01 thr Midol
k AIJfS. u. jOS\'pb R.
Berrlgln (A,hcns: UnIversity of Gwrgla Prcu. 1988).
14. Mlrg ue, Alni o\!. Tbe ilil~ l.&mcrIl In Gnd!: TllJdJuOll (CMnbridge: C.ll1l
b.-idge Univel'$ily
PrC$~. 1974): GI~gory w. Dobrov. "'A Dialogue with
Dei.th: Ri,u~ t..",e m;m d ,he
lh!eoos T....... okOil of Rom lnos MelodOi."' Grm. Roman . .wd J:!)'7"mill< Swdil:
l 3 S (199 4):
385- 40S.
1S_ Dobrov. HDUlogue wilh Delt h." 393- 97_
16. jU1l1 s..rh.ar~ De""I. ·Yom lti<kn Ch,i>1i lid.. "'" dtm .so:bmeruhdllll MHky
..... MGti!": Die ~jd­
fis~n .. BtwriIlWlf Christ l iI1I KOIIlut 1b~llngi!dla Sdm iwtiU d.,
SpiilfOUk (AlfIer: VDG -Ver lag
und Dlte nbm k rur GeIsIl~swhseIlSChanen. 1994).
17_ Gerda P~nofsl:y-Soergel. Mkl Kkll p "CDlill""- ul>ll sr'D nimi!(iItr Auft
IWk' (Worms Wer-
ncrsche Vcr~g~g~lIsdwt. I 991) _
18. On ,he ~Il,ion of Micheb.ngelo·s Pil,a to other depictlon$ of the
><;ene. sec the collec·
tion of phow grap hs jll ?;aul0 Monti. La Pi<lQ: A Roodinl 'i MlCheiongdo
B_If~li (Mi~n : P.
Ba,u.glini.1977).
19_ Mm, 27:46,
20. Mall 1:21
2 1 Huis UI'$ von BallblSU. Tbe TllfcrWi Qr,IGncI: The WKW's.s.d>o!"", Il"I Mllf
s l'nI~u. If. Erum o
Ldv l_Merik<,kls (San Francisco, Ignlul,l$ Press, 1982). 102 .
22 . Thls ,hem e will occupy us ;&glm in chapter 11. helow.
23. Aron Ander!oOll. cd .. Tilt M""'" or God ~n.I S( Birgllld.: An AII(bolosr (Rom
e: Vilic in Polyglo'
P~. 1983 ). 33.
l~ " NOUlfOHGtll!"'1

H Domeillco i'l::alnl, "'Tile Medlt .."on of ourc lmdls P.. ,syo,,' .. nd OIlier RlIdg emne
Texts III MS umbel h 432," SlOICIia In 81'l1illo and lho: 8,lii(\I!lt Onl". ed, J.. nlfi Hogg
(l.c"",on, NY EdwUl Mdicil Pr~~'. 1993). 1,193
or
25, Ter~ of A, ;1 .. , Sp!nl..al RdoIlOl'll. ill Complnt WOlli Sa,ni Tat5II of JIM, If ,lJld ed. E. Aliwn
~'" 3 vol!.. (London SlICed .nd Wnd. (950), 1:363-64
2 b, TIle ChUSlla TnadlflllO, 3 160-7"
17 Ansdrn 011 lile VIIfIIIIII CoMpIIOll wi 011 Ou"...! Sin. plcf~cc, Sanai Arudmi <fI"I OIfI(1i., cd.
F S. Schrom (Edlllhu lgh Thom"5 Ndson. 1938-61).2:139
!8 Meyer S<.h~Plro, 111< Ptnna "."'nOll A ~ rDumlDllla NlIIIII5CripC from Cluay....r Rd.,aI
Worb (New York . Colic!!," Art A<SOClluO/I, L96 4), 71
29 GU locn of Noge", 011 HI! Own We 1.16 (Pl 156:871).
30, l!enW"u ofClIihOlUX Sml1lllK ... V"..I" TIIpKt n. SaIKI! IkllJlrdj {)pall. ed. JC~R Lcd"((q
MId Hcnl1 Roch.ol$, S vols (Rom( EdlliOl1~~ C,S(c((icnscs. 1957 - 77). 6-1:276.
31.1 I't:u'r 2:5; Rev 16.
]2, Tholl1u Aquin .. ,. Tho: Tbr« GllUlni 'raref'l Commtl".'i..... 1M Oar Fotba. ,~HG;I M~ wi dlf
iIf'oAks' Cn«. If I.. urcncc ShlJlCOle (\\b.mmsler, Md. Newmln Pro~. 19S6).
32-33-
33, See chlplcr I I , helO'"
H See dllplcr 1't. belnw
35. 5eechlplcr 13, below
36. See chipler 15. ~low,
37, St..., dl..\pl~r 8, ~1')()Ve,

Chapter 10 The FaCt ThaI Most Rtstmble:s Chnst's

I ~tt'!l<lI""'\' n iM, 101-19,
2, H. J!.UI~, "~im Bcrnud, docleul m.ri~l," SaIni &md,d thtologlm (Rome; AIl~je<.:I" 5.lcri
Ordinl< CiSlC((itn'IS, I 953). 92-1 13
3 Sleven BOllerlll, Donl( CUld !il! MySli(11 TnIIIllton Bm",,,j ~ 0""",,-, in 11M: "u.mmn!J." (Om-
budge; C~mbrldgc Unl~cnllY Press. (994), 167
4 I'IIr.XXXII 8~-87, H~rc ~nd lilrougiloul Ihis du.ple. , I ha.e (mploye<l th" In",J.. nOll ill
bl~nk verse by Allen M.. ndelb.ulIl. .. nd I N~C IhO!1o:f~ ~IID pnmed il .os "'e~, by
wn".. !>! .... I\h illY own prose lunslaliom of verse in Ch ..",C1 11, belo....
5 Alr.XXllII36-37,
6 Aleulldrc M0l5iefOn. Oonl(" SaIDI Bal)l,d (Pms A. Michd. 195]), 82,
1, p,,,xxxm 1-2
8. 1nf.I1,9S-105,
9 I'uf.XXI 1U
10 Par.XXXII 104
II, FI",.xXIII128,
12, P",XXXII.119
!3 lIollenll. P",,'I and 1M M)"'SIiClI TI4dl11011, 169
I 4 I'll, XXXIII, I ; sec d\.i.I)1~r 14, bdow
H.l'llr,IV18-l3.
16.l'urUIIS, 112.
17. 1'II"XIX,98 ,
I S.1'<lr,llJ,85,88 -90,
19 Gen 320
 NOTHTQPAGnltl_+ l H7

20. B.orb.in. NewIJun, Sisttr 01 W~ : Sr. Hildqjoldi TMoIosr ol!M hminiM (&rkeJ~y ' Univer-
si!y of CiJifornii Plus, I ~8 7) . 89- i 20
2 1. l'IIl.XXXII .4 - 6.
12. f'<trJOO(II .7-9.
23. Par.XV.llJ.
H . htt.Y.IO I.
H. "'I.ill. 121-23.
26 . ..... XXXlll .1 1.
27. hl .XXXIII. 10- 12
28. So, e.g. , ""r.KXX1I .1 7-19 , whe~ dte would ~m 10 be {.he sup~~ ~mpl~ of dIe
uitb m...! is spoken of.
29. I Cor. 1l: ll.
10. M;mtnd &robeck. SlIIOIitn II' D.lfltl ''' '_isD" (Wiesbid~ : Stei ner, 19711), 141-H.
11. P1us-XXXll 71.
12. ~er, JIlJleS, iIld Jobn were the only ont$ praen\ i t th~ n ising urthe dl llghter of
Jlirus (Mlrk S:17) , on the MOWlt oi Trin$fi gun.!lon (MiU. I 7:1 ~9). Ind in the GM-
den of Gethsem..m: (Malt. 26:36- 37) .
13. PuIJ.X. 12I, .... : luke J :18.
H. Pulj'.XIIl.37- 38, SO.
H. PurS .XV.I06, 88 - 811; luke 2: 48 .
36. PuIJ.XVIll.l 07 , 100.
37 . PuIJ.XX.14, III .
38. PUIJ.XXIl1.6 5. XXII .142 - 44.
311. PurJ.XXV. Ill-28.
40. I'II1.XU8 -66.
4 1. Mm. 2: 11.
42. PU'i.XX . I 11-24; luke 2:7.
43. I'IIt.XXXIII.I .
44. PU'i.XXY.128-35, quoting luke 1:34 (Vg)
H . I'Itrf.X)(I]. 142 -44. citing }ohn 2:3
46. hrJ.VIll. 25- 39.
41. I'Iui.X.31-13.
48. ParJ.X.14-4S.
411. "'r.xxxIl.1I4-116.
SO. hrJ(VI.J 4.
5LI'II,.XlV.]6.
52 . ......XVI.l<t-311 .
SJ. Pw.XXIII.1 H-llI.
54. ""r.XXlll. 110- 32.
55. I'Gr.XXnl.90
56. I'IIr.XXIll. 103- 8.
57. M"'leron, IMnlt ct Slim IIcMtd, 82 - 83 .
58. I'IIrJ(XXI.I12-11.
511. Giu'leppo: C. OJ Sci pio, Tilt Symbolk J!o5( in D.mlti "I'Iradi<o" (R..ven nl: !.ongo, 11184). 57-
ss.
60. Inf.xXXIY.14.
61. I'III.XXX!.!18-21.
62 SuIIllll<l TbtoIogICG l.50 4
63 /\I,XXXlIJO ·32
M Ron~ Goff~n. G_M' Btllonl (New H"~l ~nd Londo" y.lt Unh..,,,iIY Prts'. 1'18'1).
1+3-60
65. J-h$ ,~I"uon 10 Fr.ndsun lheology is c.,~f"JJ)· "".Ipe<t In Joh" v Flfilli"8. flom iloDot-
,.,lIu" '" Sdlm, An tSH)' III FranuICon E>'F'" (PT;nc~ton. N.J. Pnnn·ton Univcni.y PTeM.
198Z),
66 ""r
XXXI. 133-38,
61, DID "M." 6-11165; ~ dllp,er II. below
68 H~nl) OIhorn T.yJo •. Tbt Mtdlllt'lll M""'.
1 vols. 41 h ed, (l.ondon MlcmilLm. 1'138).
2.581-82
69 s.-e ch.lpcer 14. below
70.l'IIr.XIII,8S-87
71 Mls~ron. DIn'f (C s.,n' &o-.."d. 139 of I '
n 5.1,m27 1
73. The ~rlIi,"" dl~sslon "The Mother of God" in New"",n. s.~", of W,<dom. I ~6-9S,
heus on 1I1~ >ubj~, of lllis duple.
74 Sccch.ptct 15. below,
75.1'II"XXVIl7 28
76, PdI.XXl!I73-74
77. /\II XX1!l86 -90.

'"" /\Ir, XXXlll .3 1-43

/\Ir .XXXut . I I 5 -20.
80 /\I, XXXllJ, 145.
81 fIlrXXXlII07-S

" s.,~ ch"ptc. 6 .• bo,,~,

u Por XXXllJ 11.
8' InllI8S-lli
85. PorXXlIJ, 8S-89,

" I'uIJ VII.S2.

ChOplfr r r Tht Moot! of Nuh

I. G. K. Chcstenon. "huro<luClionH to Evcrynun Iibury edmon of dwll'S Dickens. 01-
h'" 1»1\1
2. Set lilt dlS<;m."On of HOIl' Gonkl. Dot N...!nglrnt """'" M....: DG>-.IIdl""!l UDd tM/Iogi>cbr An-
<11)'51" Kr MGlooiog'f Marlin lu,b", oJ. &0-."'8 rum grgmwiitUlI'" lutlotrisrh-.iimll.b ulhoi,rlm Gc.pric.ll
(Fnnkfun l'el.e. \.;lIIg. 1987).
3 John P""IIJ. Mory God's Ye;.o Mon.. cnmm"nt.'y by H.iIn" Un \"on B>.hh.l..., (s..n Fran·
ds.co 1&",,""$ Press, 1988). 168
... Set: ch.lpt"t 6. ~bo~~.
5 M~,.,jn Ill!hu. l«iu,e; on ~,~ In Lurhtf's ~rb, ~. p,.l.tun ~nd I.clHIunn. I, I'll
6. 1= P~ltller Wlodel. \\l,.iou; llob and Viollnr H.nk lCOll)(Iasm III Rtfo.-ma llOll z.",d!. 51<15100'''9 .
• ntl8asd (C.ilmb.idge C~mhrld~" Unhersny Press. 1995). 1I-12.
7 Chnles Gusldc, Z"ingll and rhl Am (Nr:w H'-'"n: Yale Un,,'~rs;ty Pres<. I 966). I 59
g tUIM", W",iu. eri p,.lt~~n Ind l.ehnutln. ·HIS4
9. M>rtln r.ulht.r. I!ousr PoIrll.ln luthm Walt; KrnilChr G.... mraU5f'k S7 ~ols (Weimar: H."s
B6h lau, 1883-).52 6R9
 NOTUT O '~GU1"-. O l +!J

10, Schill, 320 0.

11. Iladdllrrg Calodtilll'l, qu."tLon 36 (Schaff, ]:31 9)
12, 1 Tim. 2:5.
13 Aup u/f COIlfm.oa XXI.2 (Ir Tbeodort: Tippen ), Tht Bool of c.a.n I
(Phl luldp hli. Fru-
tress Press, 1959 ), 4-7 .
14-. Apology XXJ.9 (Ir, jUOSlolV PeiIk.m), Soot ~f COIIwd, 230.
15, NC'Wmm, Essay 011 1M O..cIopel04l1 of ChrHiian Doct,inc. 138- 39,
I 6. TIoiny_Ninc ltnidt:!, XXI! (Schill, 3: 50 I ).
17. Jnhn Clolvin, InslUUleo of Ihl Chlilllill Rdiai ... , 1I1ll'X.2 I, ed John 1. McN~
Hl (PhllidelpW .. ,
V-komninSI"" Press, 1960 ), 879_
18, M.ttlin Lmher, Lectureo '" Gmeoi, (16:4), in LUIOO-' Works, .,d. Pelikan md
Lehmann,
3:5 L
19, Mm in Luther, The MiSUl( ti dx Mm. In Lutbu'l 1Mlru, ed. PelikAn IUd
Lehm.nn, 36,19S
20. George HuntstOll Williolllll;, Th, Radical Reformation, 3d cd. (Kirksville
, Mo.: SiXI~'Cnth
Cenlury Essiys Uld SmdiC$, 1992 ), 797- 98
21 Orb., Plllhp< in George Hun(Slnn Willi.ms, ed. s,r'il wl md /lmOopllt\
W,ilm (Phtl.-
delphia' Westminster Press, 1957), 238- 39n.
12. I'oo-mulo of CmmnI, Solid Dt<:woltinn, XlL15. B<d: of Cooo>rd, 635.
23, See chapter 3,.oo ve.
H. For enm emp oruy effnrts II • reSl1.temcnl of this positive pbcc , !.ee
Heikn Auguslinus
Ober man , The Vi/fin Mcuy in E>GDfdiCfJ 1b<ptdJl! (PhUoldelphl.. Fon =s
Press. 1971): md
O.vid Wright, Cbosm by God. Mary on Ewngdi(al Pr~i>'e (lnn dnn: Molr!;
hilJ Picke ring ,
1989).
15 A .plcn dld md leun ed summary. whic h like. ., mlny nf his studi
es, coul d h,ve: be-
COlll~ l full-lenXth book , Is lhe wnrk nf my lolle cnlltagu~
and friend, Arthur Cui
Piepkorn, "M.1ry's Plolcc Within Ihe f'I:ople of God acco rding In Non -Rom
an Cilh o-
lies," Ma,/an SwoIies 18 (196 7): +6 - 83.
26 . .... "91~u'9 C(fl~iOO, I. I, Book of COII(ON, 21.
17 nlnI mS f Torrince, "Intr oduc tio n In Th< School at Ftllll: Tho C4I«1
H
1imtf of thr RDonrd
C/llmb (New York: H.rper lnd BJ'Olhen. 1959), l~lU,
2S. unger Caucnhm, ques lion 31, in School at FoIID, 19 1.
19. W'll<cr Tappolec, eli .. Des Man.ma. du 1140'Il10101'111 (Tubingen. K.ttnn
iUUI Verbg, 1962).
30. See Th. ChllSlian TRldiriOfl, +,161.
31. luthe r, "Scrmon nn the Prcs =tati on nrOl ,i5t in the Temple."
in L"lbu< Wuk/.
51;6 88-9 9.
31. SmoJ",ld ,vlides. H, in Di.Ikk<nnlllisxb,if!m da Clull9ll,sch-lmhaisclom Kilcb.
(GOltmgen: V~n ­
denh ned und Ruprecht , 1951 ), <4-14
33. Mut in Luther, Commmlary III! dx Mafoi6cG1. in !.toll",'1 Works. ed Pelih
n l.nd ldlm .tnn.
21:3 55.
H. Rom . JO 17.
35. £til'll Bizer, Fides po audit" : Ei", Unlmuch""lj iiber ~i. EnrokdWl9 d« Gto-tI'
hrlSltei1 GOIlt:! durch Mor -
lin Lullm (Neu klrch ell Krci~ Moe n: Verlag der Buchholndlung des
EnichungsvNeius,
1958).
36. 1 Cor. 13:13.
37. Thn mu Aqu illu Commm!Ofy III! the SmttDCd IV, ,,1.1. 2, Ii.
38 I Cor. 13: 13.
39. This cnnc eplls cll'cfuIJy eXolmin~'(] by Joseph C Mcle lland , rio< V;,iM
t Word, of GO<!: .-'.n
250 "OHSrOP~G£5 '.0 _ . .

E'f'X,IKIII of I/l( Six"lmcnlol T~r of Prltr Monyr lknnilJh, '\'.D 1500- 156Z (Gnnd R.Pld"
MLch.: Wm . B. Eerdmms, 1957).
40 C.lvin lruliruttl III liA M~NdH ed., 549.
4 I. Marlin LUlher, COffin1CLIQ,y m tit< MOll"ificor, in Lurhtr', Work<, ed. Pelibn .nd Lehm~nn,
11 :304.305,338
42. L"ke 1:38.
43. Martin Luth~r, HOUJ< Pnstil, illl.urMr:; W"k 52:614-34.
H Martin Lllther, S\':rmon for 25 vii. 1512, in Lurh", W,rk., lO-!IU 39.
45 . M.mn Lm her, C.mmernory m G~"'tions. in 1.u1/l(r'S Work:;, ed , Pdihn ~nd Lehm~nn,
16:387.
46. Gen . 15:6; Rom 4:3; G.1. 3:6
47. Mmin Lmher, "S\':rmon on Luke 2;41-52:' in WI"'r:; W,rk, 12:409-19
48. Roy Strong, 1M Cull of £1".0.,11, f brobtlban I'Ilm"au" ond I'IllP'nlrr (London: Th.im..s .nd
Hud!oOJl, 1977), 16. •
49. The most Ihorough invesligulon of the supposed par.nels, Hdcn H.ckett, VIrgin
Moth", Moidrn QuaIL : £Ii",ll<lb I ~nd 11K Cull of Ih, Vi'llin Mary (HoundmiHs: M.cmiIll.n,
1995) , qU"-'lions the exi<tcnce of. dir<:el conn~cuon, mribuling the ide. mort! 10 lhe
lwcmlclh century lh.n 10 lhe se.'cnteenlh.
SO. Margatel Aston, I.oll.,d, and Rd.rm",; lm"lj'tl ond liuracy in Late M.Ji,,,,1 RtliSioo (London:
1I.mbledon Press, 1984), 325n,
5 I. Til, Yotc Edilion of tIK Shorltr IWIIlS of Edmund Sptn;tr, cd Willi~m A. Qum CI .1. (New H.\'cn
~nd london: Y~lc Unive"ity Press, 1989). 72.
52. Edmund Spenser, Til< Fa.r .. QumLr. I. 4. ed. Thom.. P: Roche. Jr. (New H~vcn ~nd lon-
don: Y.le Unh'~"ily Press, 1981), +0 .
53. Millon, I'Ilrodis. I.o$t, V.385 - 87; s~e clupl~r 3, .lxNe.
54. Milton , ,Inaoi" Rt"in..J , !.IV - 32.
55 See~h~pler 7, . hove.
56. John Juli .n, DictiOMry of HrmMlog~ reprim ed. (N~w York; Duv~r Publigtions, 1957),
270.
57 . O,,"en Ch.idwid, A lIinory of Ch,hlloniry (New York: Sr. Mmin's Press, I 99 6). j 66.
58. D~'id Price , '"Albr(Xhl Durer's Repreocnl.tions of F~itl\: The Church, U)' Devolion .nd
Veneration in th~ 1tpocoJ)'pIt. '" z"i",hrift fiir Kururphl,hu 57 (1 99+): 688-96
59. Albrecht Diirt!r. Dos MOflmld>en (Lr.ipzig' Insel-Vcri.g, I 93 6) .
60. U K 6: 1169 (Wolfg~ng Brounfe!&).

Chapter! 2 The Motu Gloriosa

1. Pelihn, /<sus Throogh rlL. Cmruri(\', 232.
2. Rene Wd1ek. Corl«pts of enl,(ism (N~w H.ven: Yale Uniw",ly Pr~ss, 1963),121.
3. See Geoffrey H. HArlmm, Wordswenh', lWu~ 1787-1814 (New H.'·en md London: y.le
Univ~rsjlyPress. 1971),173.
4. Wmi~m Word .....'Otlh, £"I",;oni,ol SonJl((~ P~n 11, Sonnel ii , Tht Poom. 2 vok (N~w H.-
ven ~nd London; Y~le Unive,..,ily Press, 1977), 1:464.
5. Wordsworth, Ecrl",iostkal s.mn.l<, Sonn~l xxv, 1,474: iulics .dded.
6 Emile Mile, The GOlhi, lmogt': ReliSi ..s Arl in FrorK' of IIx Tilirlttnth CmlufY, lr. Dora Nus",)"
reprinted. (New York: Hieper, 1958),254-511
7. D."id Friedrich Smo,s. The lif, of}tllts Crlri",lly hom,ntd, tr George EliOl. 5th cd. (lon-
don: Sw~n SonncLlschdn, 1906), 140-43.
 NOHS10~"G(! lU-l1 lSI

8. George B iOI. M"W""",«b, t!d. Bert G. HornN~k (New York W W NorlOn, 1977).
530,5H.
9. NOVilii, Werlce"1Id 8n,{, [1'\lIlj N(II1lIi5, t!d Alf,,:d Kdlcw (Mun ich, Wlllk1cr-Verbg,
[19(2)),102.
10. FoIlSlIhc Thcnlor<GII. 115-28.
II loh~nn ~ter Ederm,lIm , GOIl"acM m't GOttl,. in d(n lrul<n ~hlttl ""II<S l.tM.~ ...:I. Fritz
Bergemann, 3d t!d (B;idell-B-ilden lnse! Verlag, I \IS 5), 7 I 6- 20. Tnml~tion.' through-
oUl thIs dupter lre my own.
12. Set' Chlp1ef 9. lbove.
13. loh~'l Wolfglng von Goethe. FoIl5t. 3588-95; .lithough III chapu~r 10 1 h~ve. In quOt-
Ing ManddlNum's translation of Oolnte Imo blank verse. primed the quontions in
v=e forms, theM! Um!lltlons intO p=. whIch H" my owu. hive b.-m woven intO
,he teXl.
14 P.cin~ld &chv..ud. fiihrn~..ru. GonIlOl FoIl<l4"huulfj. flkli,""8 de. Wm.:.1IDII Go:sc.bic.btr sMn
fnlstd:"mg. 7th t!d (S!llUglr! Alfred Kroller. 196-4-), 59.
IS. N Ul't. 12094-95.
16. FoU>l, 12013-1 9.
17. FoII<C. 1l03!-36.
18 Luke 1:28 (Vg).
19. Gunther Miillcr. "Ok organ\$Ch" Stele im F~l.ISt: fll,IIO"illll 34 (1933), 161 n.
20 StuHl AIkins, GottIIe's ""lISt A Utffl'Y.wlysis (Dmhridge, M=. Harvar<.l Umverslly
PI'''''. 1958), 172
21. Hlrold Stein Ja.lIIz, Tbt Form !I Goctbo: '5 -F.IISI- (~hlmoro~, Md.: Johns Hopkins Unher-
sity ~s, 1975), 4S.
22. Cyrus l-I~mlin , ed., Joh~nll Wolfg~ng von Goethe. Fawl. A r'0gNY: Bodll'OlJn4s GIld 5<>ulctJ,
t<l.. Cyrlls H~mhn, II. W~her Arndt (New York W W Nonon, 1976), 304 n 9. On
.he meanlllg of ,he tiue -Doc'or Mili~nIlS." sec Ann While. NGma GIIII NOXlluxt.CIlIf in
GOfIb,\ "Fall<!" (London : Unh'ersity of london imtitute of G",-manic Studies, 1 " 80),
37-38
13. nllHl. t 2096-1 03. On the Mot.,,- GlorlOSllnd th~ IIU~, (;.,rlu.rd MObus. Die Chn\lus-
Fmgt m GOfC~ l.tM. "oJ Wtrk (o.lI~briick: A. Fmmm, 1964), 291-95, urges th., th~e
lines '101 he r~ .IS Clu:ISll~n ilIId Catholic.
24 fot" u~mpl\'.IWs!. 13H. 902S-30. 9364.
25. NIlI!, 11993-97.
26 hill.l!. 12009- 12
27 nlltS!,12001-4.
28 Falllt, 12100- 12101
29. Fa~SI, 1 J 14
30 J.tnu. Foo-m 01 Gotthti "Fowl: 101.
31 Robert E Dye, "The Easier Dml'"lnd th" Ide. nfMedlauoli in Go<:thc's flIUSl." PMU,
92," 74.
32 Fallll, 35S8-95; s« .Iso lhoip'er 9, ~bo=
33. H"rnunn F.ihnrleh. "Goe1hes MUilhnschauung ill seiner FIUS[\ugooi,,-die u-
rullung und Yojjendw'g seiller OplTnrcform," GottIK: NM ~ ~ pbl!tucbs dO" Gotthf-
Wsdllcb;ft2S (1963): 257.
34 ""1lI~ 1206" - 7 S. Set-: .ht': COImneUlS of Max Kor'lnlercll. Grill WId 6udtSl41>o okl Didltuns,
3d ed (Fr,mkfurl' Vi ltoriO Klo,tCTnlilun) , 1 25-26.
lH NOrr!rO'AGUlll·/1

lS Foust, 3730, 1l00~

36 I\lll$l, 11061-68
37 Wi lhdm Ernrkh, DIe Symboll k do I\lll$l II, 2d cd (Bonn Alh=.ium- Verl.g I ~ 5 7), .. 18-
19
38 Fo\l>I, "Truber Tag," 15
39 I\lIHl, "Triiber T.lg"
-10 FaIHC, 10103-9
H Fallll, 1298-130~.
41 FaIlSI. 11017-60
-13 luke 736-50
44 ADII 4-579-81 (~Yfllo!ld F CoUIIU)
45 Luke 1'41.
46 ~, 11031-44
.,. John • .-26 •
• 8. I\lIHI, 1l0H-52
.9. HIISI. 11053-60
50. Emn GrulII~d,. "?rolog und EpIlog im F'u~lpl.n von 1191." Gon"'" ~tIJ. nHg<,ja phr-
bucbs okr GooIht-Godlsc!lll(1 10/" ("''1\1) _ 63-1 07 .
51. Sttch.opl~r 1(I,.hm~
51_ FoWl. 118(17 -8,
53. FaWI, 1l()01-4,
54 FaWI, 11882-83 .
55. Heinl Scnb.ffe-r, "'II$( Mtllrr T~ I: 1M ~ de 19. ph,huroo-u (51u l(g.rt: Mcrzl~, I 98 I), 163.
56. faull, 11811-73.
57. f\J,XXXIIl 145
58. Faun. 346-.7. 171.
59. faull, 118H-55
60. """II. 11862-65
61 fallSl.111(1+-5.
61. faUll, 12101. 11110
63. "'OSI, 111(12-3
64 FoIll1,6914
65. HOSI, 8592, 86.0, 890 ..
66 ""lIS!, 8914. 89." 8954
67 lirosl.7194.
68 faUS!, 9258-59
69 ""Itil,9170-1)
70_ "'''''. lOa.., 1915. 818\1, 5450; 8 1-47; 6211. 6218
71 Fallll. H19--i0
11. faUll, 6498-6500
n frI"Il. 6510. 99'1S-50.
11 frllIIl, 10055-66, 10041-51
7S. FaIlSI, 7412, 7'1-40- 'II.
76. Fo.II. 1201l
77. Fa1lll, 11997
78. "".11, 26(13 -10, Hans Urs von S-I[h.~r. Prom(tMIII: Srlld;(tI rur G"",h;ehrr de! drullCMl Idldl-
Im1Ui, ld ~d (Hclddbt:rg F. H. Kerk Verl_g, 1947),5 l-l.
 NOTurO~AGf~!n_ .. 151

7\1. Fo"'r, 1191 8-25 .

80. Fallll. 1210 4-11 .

Chapw ! 3 The W(I!l1OIl CrothN with tht Sun

I. 'Wn n' Thlr ~ Won da-.· ' SIa¥r ~ oj d•• G«qiG s... Js!e nd \ Wo. tydi~ PMrish (New York:
Creu h'e Age Press. 1942 ), 139.
2. Rev. 12: 1; see Ahfr id Th. Kis.~ng. Di. Kircbr UIId Malio : Ib/ VilboiJPlj, im
11. Kaplrd 4a Apo.
U.lypst (DUsseldorf: PlUDoS·Va-log. 1958 ).
3. PG 46:9 09-1 3.
4. ~ Edm ond Paris. La: myOOlS ft UHi,cks, t. SIkrI<. FodDIII: lcs IDQu !w.k ~u
rcmpk. ma<&drllHmr
rdiSJtur. m,"rile fi!lllSiOllS (U. Ch,u J(·de ·Fon ds: Unio n de defen se prOl
emll le suisse.
1971 ).
5. Rene Lour emm lind Rene Lqeu ne. MmPJP" <II1II hchirlgs of Mory
.l Maljugorjt (Mtl ford,
Ohio : Richie Foun datio n, 1988 ). 15.
6 Rene Lour emin . ed .. Lau,oks: Dontmmu eutbauHjUG" (Pui s: L Lethi
ellewc. 1966) .
1. tTl 1:6+ -65 (Her mlnn 1...115).
8 Rube n Vug u Ugu te. Hi<lQria ok! at.lUl oX Malio (1\ Ibuo-tmUict y.it
s.m....
SIll IIr.dgu1tS r rios
min a/dt,_ 2 \lOis.., 3d ed.. (M.l.drld: T;illeres Gr.iflcos Juri. 1956 ). I; 163- 201; me
\.SI !irer~ture " calli oged in the bilin gull wor\ ; of Glor
il Guil les ind Ernest J. Burr us.
tds .. GuarIaI~~n BihU"frat'by (WloShinglon. nc: Geor gelo wn UniwCJ$ll)' Pra~.
\986 ).
9. F.dmond Cupo:z. l.oI Wn<rabk C<Hltcinf L-"""ri. 6lk dr 10 Cboriti ok Sooint
VinCl!lt Ik ~"! (180 6-
1876). 6th ed (Pul~·l.ecoffrc. 1913 ).
10. s"nd rl L ZImW.r,;·SwHU.. Eamm!(fIng Mary: F""" IA Sa\rttllO Mdi"
f"it; (Pr lnceton. N.,.:
Pnnc emn Untv a-shy fuss , 1991 ).
11. Ren~ Ltme ntin, Lou,.,.: HiM ", eutbmtique drs GJlf"'rlrioa5, 6 vols.
(hris : LethieUem:. 196 \-
64); more ream Is Slep hme B.ium om, Hi.stol", d,lAIurda (Tou louse
: Editi ons PrIY'l,
1993 ).
11 . Cyril C. MudndoJ.e, TM Mrssage 0/ Falime (London: Burn s, Olle
s, lind w.....hbomne.
1950 ).
13. BelnerL.tnd Petri , H~budt iu Mo! iIIIk _ 533 (Ren e Lour emm
); l criti",,1 p$yc holog i·
nl eum initi on of lh~ twO vi<i.sons In Belgium is tlul ofGe rd Sdul lenb
erg. Visional(
EIk~nisst (Aug sburg : Pluk x:h Vttlag. 1990 ).83 -95
r4. Since the publiClC\o n of this Ii<! of len lpp.t rition s. r wo ,ddu ioni l onr:. h~"", been
H ~p­
prOlled"": Aklt i in J'pan and BeLi nialn Venezueli.
15. See now D~vld BW:.kbourn. MorpiQgtn: ""wId lJOD! of lhe VirgiJI Mary
itt NIIItI«Iuh-Ctntury Gc·
many (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994 ).
16. B~ckbourn. M.rpi~. 5. aec.u.., this roste r of elem ents oorr
espond~ so close ly to the
one I Iud form ubte d in me first drifr of mls ch..pta-. befo re reod
lng (lOd revie wing )
BI~c kbourn's stud y.l.m gr~lefully ldap llng it here 10
my rithe r diffe rent hi'to rlClI
pm" "",
11. On the significance of this proh fenu lon in lhe mod ern cu. I<Cf!
R~ne Lour mtin . Mwti .
pli,atl(ln dI!I oJlPdlitiom dt Jo V-1<f9! dUjouIJ'hui: lSt·a tllt? Qtit vtIIl-tll! lire?
3d ed. (PUis: hyu d.
1991 ).
18. Sec. In gene nl, Wa-n e, Freilllg. Velh-· unci ElIllllfr<immlgktit in du
friibm Nruzril : M... im·
-..alJlohnlJl im fiirsthlSl.urn Mum!!1 (l'IIda-born: f . ScOOnlngh, 199] ).
19. luke LSI- S3.
10. Will iilll Thom as W.l!lh. OIIr lAJy of Fouma (New York: Micm ilWl
. i 947) , 21 4. 140
21 Emile7..1'1b.t.owolcs, If bnhl Allr.'CI \'iutdl}" (Oo>u. Nil A SUHlm. 1993).
11. AntOlllO Go'lI.iltl Dnw lo..'da,,,""&ia 1"1"'10, lounGmIC"nnma. il< 10 Mall' «>nqu","""ora • Ia
MOl;. !.I.,M<lurtt (A~unlit'm. P.ragua) Ediuo"~, r~. 19I1S).
23. Ann~ Grarlt:>w<h, MOB"" M al ... Fll"I(l11II1OO ImP'""""n1tfl('Olto m ,lg<Jn~ illl<igma ...., ..,,., (C ..•
au,; Mtl>Cf> dr I:Idll\ ArIes. 1991).
H Chri'lol'her RcngcB. MorJ of lilt Amtr'ntl Our IMy of GuMoi"pr (New Yor!:, Alt.. Hnu""
19119).
25. I\"OI\~ G~w .. J,KI \.t"ia Ct.r, Bmgern.·" Ma~ MOl"" of Gaol, MOld." iii Iht Poo, (M,,)"
knoU. NY' Orb,~ lI..oh. I 9119). 1S1.
2b. Wilham B Tlo)'lor, ,on", Virg'n ofGu.KIalupe In N~ Sp.aln An InqUIry Lo(o till> SOCi,1
!lhlory of M,lria" Devotion." Amtri<." fl~noIogi.r 14 (19117)' 9-25.
27 Em, ClmpbeJI. "The Virgin ofGuad,lupe .",'1 I),,: F<:1ll,1~ Sdf.lmage A Mexican Ca'e
History:' 1If00ntr Wcrshlp. cd. lame. 1 PreMon (Cbapel Hill: Unl vel'llt), "f N o rt h Carolina
Pr~s. 1982). S-H
28. Ad~b r",rn.ndc/. D,OltI , ..hUpGniro< <k 101"1(0' MilO'! Ydtiiladts iIr pon""" ~",,"d (Mex'co.
D F P,"oram, Edlturial. 1983). 1011- t2
29. Rodrlguu. DoI),,,,l O!tji"u.... 16- 10.
30 Wilh;un A ChrtSli:lJI. Jr.. AjrpInu<m In lotI' MN, ... I aM Rtn.u""1I(t" Spun (Princeton, NJ:
Pnn«ton Unwc."ty Pn'1oS. 1981): M.ui. Dolo,"", Diaz Vaquem. lA Vi'8!'l {'II 10 (S(UltUIO
(a,~vbrsn dtl lrar«(o (Corduva; MOOl~ d~ Pi~d.od Y Cltja d~ AhmlQ< d~ COrdob •. )987).
11. Ocuvio I'n, !hr Labyrinth 0/ SoIu"&'. If. Ly<~"rl~r K~rnp (N~'W York Grove p'''''. 1965),
BS.
j 2. Eric R Wnlf. "The V"K'" uf GU~rl~hlpt: A Mcx;~~n N/,t;OI1/,1 S}lllbol," ;oomal of Amtfi·
can f;)IltM<' 11 (I 9 S8), 34 - 38; Slafford Poole. Our IM}' of GuM.hrpr: Tbr Or,,....
and Soar"'!
of • Muir., Nou_1 S)·mbal. 153 1- 1791 (Thcson. U"I""o;ily of ArltQ-l" Pr(:$;!. I 99 5).
33. Ed" in F-duud Syh·e~t. ".d .• ~IIC>I" StftOfll ~ Gtllldcriupe; Molbrr of Gaol. MOlbn oil. Amnlnts
(Datlas. T~x. 8r1dwelllibnI)·. 1992).
3-1- Jo;t,quin AOlQ-lllO Pt;ii~IO!O.l. M. !'Mi. ,.,....Iuf*'" SI~ XIX (Muiw Cuy. fditOria) Iu •.
InS).
3S. P~lef Lastl n , IA rrolSi,nK ""II d, Rlllm~ CI1hn coonu (MuntreaL Guerin. 1987).
3 (,. lacqu"" Lo.f~yc, QIlt!lJllrOotJ od GtHHkrlupr. ~ Fo,""'tton of Mal""" Ngl"",.1 Clln><iou""". I 53 I -
1813 (Chkago: U""1:~rtyofC:hk~go Prc~. 1974). 111-57.
11. R..rbua Po(,(,. ··Jmrn,c.II.:ue and PowC'rflll· Th~ M;uuo Rl"",,,,l.n Ihe Nm~l~enth Cen·
tury," In l""""",j,w'" """~rflJl Tilt I-tm.k ,n s..crni 1m.,. mrl Sac..1 Rrolrl)< cd Cluio;s.o W
Al kin<Ol"l. Conmnte H Budl,,,,n. ,nd Ml.Iglrel R. Mil~ (Bastnn. Be~con f'r<::M.
1985). Ill, 183-8", 1119.
311 FinbJ., RYlU. Ou, l....ty of NUmo (Dubl",. Brown and No);u,. 1942), 228-29.
39. P.ul VI. Plls"mtg( to lit(rlTl<l-Md,"1t< (Waslllll[o(lon. D.C Unlt~d Stalc~ Catholic COllb·
~n~o 1968).6
40. These nne'" w,' re ,)"t~maticJlly f"rmulat('(\ hy Ih~ Sancd COllgN'R.,loll for Ih~ Doc·
trine of the Faith (the Holy Office) on U February 1978
41. Bbdbnurn. Mo'p,fI9'D. S.
41. !itt. ~.&., Conleh~ Gilhu. If,,,oJrI_h flflt ,,,,Il0l,,,,,, WllIfabn (Wl,rzl:,,"g &ht~r Verl'R.
1991).
"3. Andrea Dahlhc'g, "Th~ BodY'" Prllltil'it· ofHoimn. Thr"" Pilgrimage-; 10 i.ourdeo<."
Conll1t1"S Ihl Sa<laj. Tht i\IIrhropoklgy .1 Chli!l"1n P,I~rim"9". cd. John hde a!H1 Mic hAd 1-
Sallnow (N~w Ynrk' RoU! l~dge, 1991). 35.
 NOlli1 0 PA G IS 111_96 lH

H . An ur!y ~l(empt ~I ~n ..ses-mem WiS A. Mirclw1d, Tbr Facu oJ ltIuN!$: ADd Ibr Mtdico!
8wal~. u. francis lurd (London: Bunu;. C41e!i, And W.I.lihooume, ! 924).
4). B. Popo!. "Immlclll~te iUld Powerful,"' 173.
46. L"Osltl'o'lltoItRomaroo. 12()qo~r 1981 .
47 . Blackboum. Morpinp. 5
48. B. Pope. ~ irnJTl.lcul.ote and Powerful." 183 -84.
49. Joseph A. I'l:lIelier. Thdun DIIncal at Fatima (New York: Dou ble.:by Imige Books. 1983).
146- 47.
50_1ohn Henry Newm~n. MThe Onhoc!oxy of the Body of the Flithful during the 5u-
pumley of Arlinlsm." Note V to The Mons of Ibr foonb CIIIWI)( 3d ed. (London,
E. Lumley. 1871). 454- 72.
51 . Dlhl~rg, "The Body U I Principle of Holism,M10- 11.

Chapler J i- !be Grrot Ex{tplion

I. Edwud Dennis O'Connor. Til( DogmI .1 rilt Immllcul,ut Ctw<p'kMI: lfuIoq and SianilimllCf
(Notn~ Dime, Ind.: Unlvmiry ofNotn~ Dime Pres.>;. 1958). conuins imporwu hi~lor­
iu.l And io:mogr~phic JTI.Iler~1s on Ihls dogl1U. .
2. TIlt Christian TllIditiM. 1:286 - 90.
3. Milt I : 18; Luke 1:34. See c1upcu B. iboot-.
4-. Krtstu Slendihl. "Qui!; et undd An An.Upil orMt 1-2." In judnl/Um UrdlristaltlJll Kircbc
,",,"'h,,11 Iiii' joochlm ll"rmia$, ed. Willer Eltester (Berlin: Alfred wpelmilln, I 960),
I 03.
5. Luke 1:35
6 &uer-Gingrlch. 197.
7. Huhn, Ow G.hdl!llli, <kr lungfro"-Mull!1 Maria Mdt clem Kitcbm~t~r AmDrosllll, 79-BO.
B. l~ . 53:8 (Vg).
9. Ps. 5 1:S.
I O. Ip.Augustin" ~jnst Two fpi!fla of 1M PtlctgiOlli IY.xi .29.
II. Ambrose CommtlJlary on halm 37 5.
12. Sec c~er I. ibo;:w,,_
13. 8run~ro Gbuudini. Difll lO$ !lrmt: Nott ~i ..... rio!otit 0fIS1i1li... (Cis.1l .. Monftrnto:
Piemme.1992).
14. Augustine On NGIUI< on.d GIWCC JtJ.Xvi.41 .
IS. fit CbrislllD TNt!itiort. 3: 71 - H .
16. Seeehipter IS. belov.·.
17 . Tilt:Chriltian Tmdition, 3:171.
18. Sec chlpt'" 1O. lbove.
19. &:rrurd of Olirvll.LX fplstlc I 74.7.
20. Tht Cnri!(iOll Tmdili/ln, 3: 169.

VIr.
2 I. A ~plendid colltttlon, Pf'rtlnent to Ihls chopter iUld to this entire book . is J,icquelln"
t.fonuine -Dosogne. lCOl109"~' de I"m_.It I. dtm fEm'I" hy.nIiol tI m Ouiolmt
(Brussels: ACldem,e ror~, 1992).
U . MireUl Levi O'ACOlll. Tilt: ICOIIIIgroph~ of th! Immaculate Cooc:q{iM in tht Middl! ~ ond Elrly
R.!Dtlntu (New York: Col~g .. Art AssociJ.tion. 19S7).
H Tbr Cbrisfiaa TIOdillOlt., 4:38 - 50.
14.1'$. 51 :S.
25 . 1'$. 116:11.
256 Nons TO ~AGES' H-l09

26 He.tku A O!lt"m<.n, TM I-I",,,,,,.f 1.1,0,...1 Throlosy (C •.",brid~~. Mos.'. Hnv~.d Unive.-

,Ity Pres,. 1963). 289.
27. Roherto Z",.lIoo; .od Eliodom Mariam. L. OOllflM mofl""'9i,o 0; GiOl'OM' Duru Scow
(Rome: Anwnianurn, 1987)
28. C~rnl", fuJi';. IX drlmo pm:oli o.ig",.Ii, in R. Vj~jll( Marill. Inl'tllill""onts d, d""",,,,, qoom latu,1
IOOJ\Il(j nUl\! 51;01", (Rome Officium Ub,i C"hulici. 1941 ). 84
29. Luke 1:28. J5 (Vg).
30. TM ennslion Tr.dili"", 4,302-3.
31. [)e,wnger. 2803- ....
12. S"" ch,pl~r 13, aoove.
33 M.m". Warncr. /Jon, of AU 1-/.. &x: The Myth "nd C~II {II ,ll( Virgi" M.ry (New York: Alfred
A Knopf. 1976),251

Chaptrr]5 Thr QUUIl of H~II>'Cl

I. Sec Jan R~dkicwicz. Auf d<r Sudt "",k !in<TJ1 moli"los,~htll Glundprfrutp' En< hmoli><h-<ymm-
oli,dl< Unlmud'""9 U!>lI oil kuren hunJm JohI< (Conston",,: Hmu" g-Gmrc. 1990).
2. See lhe br;~f ,umrnor), of Edw~rd Schillebeecks and c.tharina H.lkes. MOl)': Ye;IUo.y.
Todo): T"",o,,1IW (New York ; Cr",srood, 1993).
3. It will be C"ldenl how much the following pr",;cl1w;un ow~ '0 thc Irc"dum cs,,"y of
Karl R.hner, "Thc IIllCTprclJ.tion of the Dogrm. of the Assumption ," in Thwlosic.llnl'ts-
l'll':mons. Ir. Cornelius Ernst (Ballimore; Helicon Pr"", 196 I ). 2 1 $-27.
4- [)en1.'ngcr. 3903.
5. Mari~ de Agrcd., Vi"" d, 10 Virgrn Mali, "SUn 10 ['",<!Obk Sol Malio ok je;,j, ck JlgI!"' [Madrid.
I 670] (Barl'don~ Mommcr y Simon. 1899), 365; Ir"",l~tion adopled from N~nci
Graci •.
6 . A symp.>thcti" but ,till crilic~l account wa, Ihat uf R~i'mond \\'Inch and Victor Ben-
netl, Tht A.l.tUrllj>liOll {If Our Lady ,nd C.tholi, TII<o"'9Y (London: Ma,m;lI~n. 1950).
7 Edmund Schlink eel al.. "An Ev~ngdia.J Opiniol\ 0'1 Ih~ Pr()d~rm.lioll of the Dogma o f
th<: Bodily As.,umption of MiU):" u. Conrad Bergendoff, luill<",11 Qwnmy 3 (I 95 I): I HI.
8. On the silence. 0. F.ller. IX priorum lOO:ulorum ,iimlio {If'" As.<"mp Il OOmt !kola. M~riol Virgmi'
(Rume: Glegorian University. 1946).
9 . Cui G. ,nng. Arlsw"!O job, II. R. f. C. Hull (1'1;n(£I0n, N.J.: Princeton UniYersily Pr~'"
1969)
10. Job 382.
11. Mall. 23:37
11 TIl< Ori<li." TmJilio". 3: l 72-73.
13 . ~e the ,wdies coll ened ill Michel v.n E'hro~d, Au, origiD<\' d< III Dolmilioo d! 10 Vil~
(Aldershot Vanorum. 1995).
14. &mHd of Cbin"ux Ep'<lk 174.3
1 S. Bemun of Cilir-·.ux $tlmonl on III< Alwmpll"" 1.1.
16. 1""'lI" Dd , 145- 50 .
17. Anloine Wenger, L"krompi iOll d. 10 U<I' "'tnl' Vi,'8< darn 10 IroJiliOll by",",ill( du VI•• u Xe ,;iel.
(Paris: hmillll Fr~n~ls d'E",dcs Byu.ntln~. 1955).
IS John 1926-27.
19. Lampe, 760
20. Chrisla SchAffer. tlulgtnon'l1'oIn iSI M~r", i" om H'mm<i: V"", Hri"'9""tl d" GOI I""'"I[" in c'F'dt,
Throi.Jsir ""0 UluI9,,,,h<r KUIlSI d" F,iih",il (R~gensb"r~r f [".>SItt. 1985).
 NOTl S TO PAGES 10'_10 257

11. See chapter 7. ~bove.

n. c"n. 5:14, 2 Kings 2: I I.
21. Theodore the 5tudite OnI!iOfti V2-3 (PG 99-721-14).
14. ModeslO$ On 1M [)(wmiuOII of Ibe B~ VirglD Mory (PG 86 12 77 - J I Z) .
15_J\lgi~, IA mOr( n l'0K:5omprion de la S<llnu Vi<I9', 214-H.
26. NicephQrus C~llistus Erd";""tical Hiwny XVI1.28 (PG 147 292)
27. See Imago Dri, pi i I
18. P;o.md~ A,k~, C4lO1'1SSio< "DD1t1i of th< Vi'ljin" (Princeton. N.J .. Princeton Unl ~rmy
Press, 1990)_
29_ C. R. !)odwell, ~ PktClriol AIts of tIw: Wt:;e (N~w H~ven ~nd London: Y~le Uni~rsily
Prt$s, 1993),360-61
30. c"n. 3-15 (Vg); _ dupter 6. l~
31. Denlinger. 3901.
31. See the helpful study of Wiher J Burglu.rdt. "The Testimony of the !'atri.tic Age Con-
cerning /!.ilry'S Oelth, - Manon SluoIiG" 8 (1957): 58-99, together 'with the uticks Ih~t
follow in the .... me ls~ue of th.1.t jounll.1, by J M. EglIl on the Middle Age$ (100 - l1i)
lIId by T. w. Coyle on tbe pre.~t mtus of tbe qu estion (I i3-66).
33 . Luke 2:35; see clu.pter 9, above.
34. LTK 1: 1068- 71 (M lchlelSdunaUli).
35. Luke 1:38_
36. I..... 25:8. I Cor. 15:54.
37. Mm , 17;52-53.
38 . See chlpter I, abcwe
39_ Yves M.-]. Congu, T,.,JitKIII .... rJOd,!i0ft5: ill! Hk!OrlcaJ .... 11De%aiC..J &sty. tf_ Miclucl
Nasehy lnd ThomlS Rlmboroogh (Ne'''' York : Mlcmlllin, 1966), Ill.
iO . Walther von Locwenich, Du modtrllt K.l[hclirim1u~ 2d ed. (WI tten: Lmhcr_Verllg. 1956) .
276-77
41. See TIw KodoIk 01 R«non Carholicism, 118- 42.
42. Sec, {he lnll~ .. of 10l EggellWln, 1M "EWesiologi<dv walde· in.itr Mllnologit ok5l1.
ViltikonulIIl" und "Kollliliare Ptrspa("m" Gb tItI<~ HDrilOOU fur Jos Vmtiindrtis ckr MiuJn~Mf{ Marldl
(A1tenbl:rge: On~ Verllg, 1993)
43 . The evolution of the Dogn~hc Cons{i(uuon o n the Church as u de.oh with the doc-
u-ine of Muy is ,,~II summuiud in (;fiud Ph,IIp', " Ot t Ges<:hichte der dog-
m~(iscben Koastitution tiber die Kirelle 'Lumen Gemium:" in Da.- Z..-(j[( I-Inikoru.cht
KoMI, ed. H~r)",TI Vorgriml~r, 3 vok (freiburg: Hader, 1966-68), 1:153-55.
44. The close theologill COJUlea.io n between the doctrine o r Muy lIId the dOCtrine of tbe
church hu be.,n St!t fonh in Yves M -J. Cong~T, Chnst. Our ~.md!lw ClIurrh, U". Henry
St. Jobn (Westminster, Md. : Newmln Pr~, 1957); md In Ouo Semmdroth, Mory, AI-
dltt~ of th. Church, Forev.uTd by Jaros1av Pelikln (New York: Sheed and Wlrd, 1963).
i 5_ AVt"ry Dulles, -introduction" to Lumm GmtJWII, In Tbr Documents of \1otiRJI JI, ed. Wllter
M. Abbot! (New York : Guild Pr~. 1966). 13 .
46 LuIll<Il Gcuium 67.
4]. Abbot, Oo<umCll~ 85-96.

Chapter 16 Thr Wommt lOr All Seasons

1. W. H. GudneT, ..d., Poam Df Gtrord Manky Hopkin~ 3d ed. (New Yor~: Oxford Univenotty
Press, 1948), 101.
HS "OlHTO~A(l!IIIO-H

2 G~l 2:20
3 Gregory of Ny$5.l Af'!ItR EW\Or,,,um II 419
.. Theodou 'enny-Klppen, MutingOltln """ COU ...... II .. In EpMoo: \.b:> ArkmillU MOrM
(Zurich Dlimon, 1986)_
5. MIS 19 23-4)
(, I Cor lJ: 11.
1. Wis 8,7,Plllot.wlI63IC,
8 Lukr I 48 (Vg)
9 Augusdne Eqou~_ 011 tbt Book of hlims XOI,]
10, G<:n 3.14, Luke 2l <j.J
II "-t.12104-11

•
 Index of Proper NQmes
Abr~h~m, 69, 73, 76, 160-61. S«<tIso ]ndu
of BibU..,.1 References
Ag'ed~. Moril. dt joe$U\ dt:, Vidlik 10 Vi ...
Mollo, 106
Aleu"dn of Alex.md.ta, 57, 63
Alu..ondn. empress ofRuslh. 1
Alulou, Malgnel, 117-18
AmbrOS(' of MUm. 33, 104. 119-21. 190-
91.118-19
AmbroolUi A" rpen ul, 8enc:dktlnt: abbot. 91
Ango:llco. Frio (Guido dl Pierro). MaUOOllioa,
'"
A~tmofCimubury. 119-H. IH
Antony ofEgypc. mon~lk; founder. 116
Artus. md "''''';IoI'Il, 51. 57. 60. U-U
Ath"1,1s;m of Aleundrll., ~ I. 5 S- 56, S8-6S.
106,116-11
Augustine of Hippo, On rrff will. 87 - 88;
hlsIOlY. i6: humility. !13; Miriam. 18. 97:
Mon!ci, 218-19: original sin ,md Muy,
33 , 191. 195; Trinity. 11; worsblp and .we-
roments , 101, 159-60
BM:h. Johinn ~b..'ti.n, Cb".tIMl o.olO/ko,
"
Il.llic, Cnolu •• 19 6
Baltlas.., Him Un von, S, 86, 119, 17S
B.lI'IlIeux. Bdgium, ,,;te uf Miliin l.p~ridOlls
(1933),179
~ ofE<kw.. 011 pr~ of M;tty in
th~ Qui:>n, 77
&ls~1. COUlKil of (1431 - 49), on lbc lllUThlcu-
Llt~ conQ:p!.lon, 198-99
&sit ofc..'m~, 89 - 90, 218-19
BuUid.. , GIIOl.lic t~~cbu, 011 birth
from M ;tt)', 49
of Josus
s".ur.ing, fldgium. sIte or "bri.n ;opp.orhiow.
(1931-lJ), 119
Boffie, the v.,n~nbk, 91-92
Bellmi, Gk....annl, Lodti< Maw_, Iii, I 47-18
Bctl\olrd of CLIi,V>.ux: on doctnrn: o( ll",
o>sump[lon, 108; os sourc~ fot D.m~'s
M.nology, lO, 139- 46, 149-S I, I 73; op-
pn<i[lol1 to doctr ine of lh~ imm;oculltc con·
crp<lon, 191- 97; on )"fuy u M~di ;urlx,
11,,,,,.,'<1 of Cw.lry~ux ('''''1IIord) Fnp'. 96. I I 5-16
130· J2; on M,,)· OS vle,o' "'J,., c,u,hl"!i F.l!j~h .•"um<>1 LnlO be",cn. H -3S. H. 109
,he "'t~m\ he~!!. 92 s...lso ILL!!~x uf !\lhhc.1 ReferenCe>
&.".... dofRt;cbe"oll.13S EhUl. ~rge ("!")" Ann h.m). 166-67
Rid. Gol",d. 194-9S Eh,.be1h. mOlhe, of john Ihe 1101'".". I S-16.
II>'X"IO of5w.,den. 11.1."." ~'i'OllOr). 129. 69-70. 10~ Str.M Index ofBlbhc..J lI.f.,.·
179.218 ,=
Bt.<:khourn. n..-.!!. 179. 183. 186 Eh,.b<:rh I. qu,,<,o of ~nJo!I.nd." Clonon •• nd
11<»10. Arrigo. II .. Mall'. 2 Vi'Xln Qo,"'<'D. 1&1-61
Bon~...",1ure ....d 1hoe ""'I'iIII.. 99 En<xh ••"umn! 10'0 he"en. 3i--lS. 207 Stt
8"d&<"". M.nhe,," f.ngll\h h),nnogr.phe •. . . lnde> of S,bhc.I R~r~n..ll=
162-63 Epheo.u •. Council of (43 I). 75. 2M. "'" of
Bro"ll.I'I",cr. liS. 116 A,hu.... ;'" ". 60; 1II>p".,;{)n for Soru.
M.... M.ltl>:lOn,:. Hl; un M'f)' os The·
'KO<<». 16. S6. 62. no
ulvin.JoIm. ISS. 160
Ernmu,. o."der;m. comt<,,-cn) ,,·.,h l.u,),,,.
C..O'·'gg10. IJooli" Iht I'uf'.' 208
On fr~-.; WIll. 89
Ch.dw;ck. Owen. 163
Cbog.D. M.r<:. Tht p,.,..., w....... , 22. IS
E"".,biu, of C...."n. on moo,,,,,c,,,,,. I I 6
Em\ochoum. I I'
Ch'kL-don. Council of (.. r; I). 60. 7 S. I 00-
E" .. ". 10.1 .. ). Ann (G•.'<lrKe EliOl). 166-67
Fl·e. 15. In. 39-52, 69. 73 . 87 . 141-+2. Stt
101.157-58
Che!,.".lon , GHb4:n Keah. 153
o)<e Index of Bib lie.1 R~rue"e~-,
Cl.udcl. P,ul. 86
COngu. y,c>, 2 12
hi'""., IVnug.1. .i'e of M"i.n 'r!"" ;,io,,,
Cunmmlnople, Fin, .nd Second Council! of
( 19 17). 7B. 17R. 179-80. 181. ISS-S6
(l81. .\~l). H
Filippsdorf. "'~ of Mor ;,,, ~pl'<'r;'ion (1 866).
CorwLn. Vi,):;"i" 49
CTOlh.w.lI;ct.ud. SO-51 ".
Fund.ofA .. hi.99.121. I·H- H .I+~
Cunim. &"" lIobtn, 93. 12 ~
Cy ril of "Iu,n!!" •. S6
c;.,""".le. n .197
Clr'l<><ho-o... /'ol.nd. M.,I.n Ib"ot ofln .....
Gmlb4:rg. lou;,. qUOlM. '·· 8 4 7
Gon. ,·Hi. 18 -79
GlOno.112.121-11
Gi<»·.nn, 'knui.no. Tht Cor.... ,.. 01 d.r I'i.....
D·Ailly. f'lerK. 197
o"miHl. ~",.r. I lot '"
C,.,."". Muimin. M.rLln v; ';on.>t)·., LiI
D.nLd. Norm.n. 77. 78 Solt""(18+6). 178. 184
D.n'e Aligh,er!. 122: ,...... on Mu); I H- Go.Ihe. Job.nn WoIfg.ng 'un. 127. 168-7\.
45; l'Iu"noonM~f). 30.139-42.145-51, l!l
Ill. In G<"edl. Henr)k. Thin! S)"Illphon); 79. 1!7
D.ehl. Ch'rles. 102 Gr"1!O<) I. /'o~. 84
Dob"",. Grq:nr)' w.. I 2 7 - 28 Crtgor)' of N)' .... · on 'he Fi"" .nd ,IL .. Sccon~
Do"u",c. and ,h" ro"f)·. 98 ....bm. 5 I: Un 1he .nnunamon. 85-86: On
Dulle<. A,·uy, 214 G<on IS ' .. n"",ndmg gcnder. no. Oil groc"
Dum 5c<>IUI. 101L,nne.. on ,he i"'''''cuille .nd f,,,,,will. 90; on John 'he R.l.1""'. lOi.
coll(rpti<>n.196-97 On M.~ri U'. 2 I II; on "lory .1 "whllOut
Dim'r, "lb'''';]'I, Tht L,k 01 Mory. 163 'I.,n." 104; "lSIon ofMHY. 177-78
Dvo"k.l\nlOnin. Sr.I"" M.,!!. 126-27 G,egor)' of Riminl. 19+
 Grillm~ju. Aloy~ . 5~-59 IUln D;~g", M.,I", viSlon.ry .1 Gu.tI;. lnp"
Gu.d.lujl<'. Mexico. 1l1~ of Muiln 'pp.irnlons (IS31), 176, 178, 180- 81
(lBI). 2-1. 78.176.178.180-81 Iug!e, Mmi". 60 - 61
GUil>enufNog<:nI. 110. 134-36 Juh.n. Rom.n ~mpcror, on Th~ok",. S6. S7
jung. C.rl CUS(,y, on lhe ."u"'l"ion "fM...,..
H~ ...IDol00 oflshnuel, 69-70. 73 S« also 10S-6
In<kll of RibliQI f\~r.,lencei JUSlin Mony •• 10.
H.nde!. c..w~ Fridtric. on Minim in IsIod r.
EfflI. 18 K.dc, I-hgdo.l.,n., Mori.n yis.iu"uy.1 Filipp.<o
Helvtd,u\. opponenl of ~romt. on nurrl'lIe don (1866), 178
.nd virgln"y. I 18- 19 J(cnncd)-, ~ FilZg<:rold. devQuon 10 Mu.,., 2
I-Iopkins.GuudM,,,I~.111-18 Kun:. M"gor~(h:o. M'TI,n vi,ion.ry at M..
HuberlU', K.llh.nnl. Ind UKben. Morl.n vl_ pmJ(en (1816).179
sion.ri.,..1 M.upln~n (1876), 119
Hubm.ier_ B.>1,h"lOor, !ladlell flcforme', 158 ul'lo•.lTe, Cuherlne. Mari.n '"i<l')[1"y >l Puis
(18)0).178,119. III ""
Ignuiu, of "'nfloch, .~, 52 laf.ye. Jocque" 18 1
1I,I~fun~u. of ToitOO, 110 I.... 5.oIetl~, France, ,lIe or M..i,n ,pplTirion
Ireno.u, of L)'OI1>: on Goonle vlcw of Mu)'. (IH6), 178, 184
5 I -52: uo Muy u s..'Cond Eve, 26, 42- . 8. Lller.n. FounhCouncil of(1215), 10. 191
50,51 ,8 1: 0" -.aivillon IS divlniuflon, Uurem ln. Rene. 2. 17B

'"'n .
Isne. S...1<o I,"lex ofBlbllc.l R~rerence~
Le ist. SU""",ll. Mu i." vi , ion ny al M>rpi"g.Il
( 1876) ,1 79
Ishm.d, 69, 73. s.. olso In<lex of BlbHCll Ref- l.....,rke , WilllI "" 107
erences !.ocwenich. W.hher von. 1 12~ 13
l\idor. of Sevllle, 9. lourdes. Fr. nce, .i[~ uf M ..i.n ' pp ... ,io",
(18\8),78. 178, 181-1I~, 187, 199
jodwig" quun ofPoJand, 78-79 LIl(;'" ".n Leyden. Tht Vl'llla with ....." AIlgd>.
jOglellO. prin~ uf Pul.nd, bUlldtr of chu",h II HI, 163
Cltlloch",,·•. 7 8-19 Luke. evangdiS( and io:on-""inler. 11-18. 66,
jn... ProInGaf:I rI. ., 7l1. Str .1)0 Illde% of BihliCiI RefuerKTS
l;oro9,vl. icon ofMotMr OfGo<1.1, ~il, 2 Luther, MUlIn, 13, 88- 89. 118. H3-H.
j~, GOn, Mari.n ,btlne., C~OI.bow" Pu- I ~6, 1 S8-S9
I.nd. viii, 1S-79 lydd,.DII><poliS. Poleqlne,.,."OO of on 1'1:1
~rom~'" Hebrew 9:001.., 26- 27.91. 93- .glu<.81-88
9 •• 116; on MIry a~ E~rV'rgin. 29-)0:
pseudonym fot PI..ctu.slus!ladbcnus. 192: Mac.",., 218-19
On virginilY. I I 6-,9 Mogda!en.,. Muy, 73-14. Ins.. .... Inde. of
John Ihe &p11S(, I 5- I 6, 69 - 10. 82-81. S,hlicol Reference._
10 }- . S« also Indu of Bibllu[ References Man:clb. III
johnofo..nuscus. 51-52, 56·· S7, 100-101, M.rceUino, 120

'"lhe Ev. nl{clm, 1.9

John SO, 106-7. s«.ho ,,.
Mucus Au,dlu_, Rom.n emperor. 41, ·H~46.

Indu of Blhl,,,"1 Referen~l:' Morpingen, G.. rtn.ny. sile of Mni." 'r""ri-

Jolm p, "ln. Po!"' . 79, 18S-66 lion~(l876). 179, 18 1-8 1
Jovin im, "PPO"CIII orJerome, on vlrg inu~, ~h thleu"C. l Y' I , M';lln 1~. MH i. n ""ionuy at
117- 111 U S.!elle ( 184 6). 178, 18~
\,jo'\C,. 28. 71-71 ..... I... I"dexol B.bllol Ril~)',John 1\ L.. Engli'h hymnogul'h<!!. 97-
Re!~ ",,,cO':<. 9S.161
M'".n. WoJfg~ng Anudr,,'. II .. lirrur. C..,.... Rocl..,. Al.>n de 1• . • nd ,h" '''''''y. 98
-18--19 Rod"KUot>.. Ricb... d. OJ! I"" Vor~1n of Gu~
Muho",nud. "'. M.,), UlllIe QIldn. 6R-711 dolupr .. -,he n..~
ofMuko.'· 2. 181
MUTlI)·. John C"ulln~·. 'IU<Mro. 9-10
M.,,,.
Rom."o< Mclod05. kIl'''" 128
1I{)<"m. GlO~a:hJOo. ,,'" Mo,". 2; S.. Ito.
Nn"n!.. R"..~"'.I)·. MOlY. 66 116- 2]
Ne-lU(iu.,. 56 Ruh"r". ~c, Plul.'- bckJ" Mal). L9i
I'ewmln. John H~n')·. \7, 59. HS. 186 Ruskin. John. ;md Giono', Morr~ 01 II.. Vlfllll.
,'\i(.O<:.I. h .... , C"unc,1 of OH), 9-10. 62. 1S.
100. IH-S8. 189 '"
S,un' Lucy ~Rend, M ....cr of. MOl)' Quom of
H<Pm. 11i. HI
Ob.:ml.>n. H."k". 19/0
Slult f'l'tcr.;bu<g. 81
Op"I,,)'k, l.d"liu\. PolISh p"ne.:. 78
Soumon. 115
Orogen of "~n"dm, on M.ry U Mod>er, 19
s"nl. J.,.brio M.gR,ore. II..iJJc.a of. H. 56.
Os~,U\ orC""h..... nd COUllcil ofNio,·•.
m
'SO s" •• h. 73. SI< OM Index of Biblic.l Refere,,~
Sch.por". M~)..,r. J 10
PoI.';m ml, P,,:rhj]~', Sr_"", Mo"., 116 Schlinck. Edmund. 205
P.olo Vcnelll"o, Tilt t:o'OIIOlial of 1M Virg,n, 164 Schub<!n, Fw,~: " .. .'.lorIO, 211; S"bor .'.I"".
P.".I. III.isc, on f~llh ~~ wlger. 160
Plul VI. Pa~. 129, I R2-83, 186 '"
Schw~ncHcld, CIS!,,'. R>.dic.IRcf"rmer, JS6
P,ul of 5.amnul•. /03 Simso". Ouo von. 115
"'-ul•. 117 SlXIW' HI. Pap". S6
"'-",h..lus Ridbenul. In Sl~lU' IV. Pope. 199
Pn. Dc""", I II I Soublroux. !lcrn.dcu~. Marl." "islonul al
/'cl'g"".87-88 Lou.des (1858).178.183-8+.199
f'l'lld~T«ki. Kn.Y'110f. SlGN M.,tl'. 126 S[",n"',. Edmund, ;md Eliubclh .. Glorl.n.
P"rgol~,. Gm... "n;' St."",
~I.,tl', 126
;md Vlrgl" QUe<:n. 161-62
Ph,hrx. Orbe. An.~I"iSl Rcfillrncr. I 56- 51 Slend.hl. J:::.i ... ~. 190
Pt"l" 01 1\J,~."<lndlll. II S-16 Serous•. o..,·;d Fncdri~h. 166
Phnl,u,. polr.,uch "fC"n.'.nrhK>pI~. 87-811 Serong. RO); 161
P,u.l:>' 1\,,,,,.3)-3-1.183.199.111-12
Piu, Xli. l'npt.. IH. L8!. 186. lOI-11 T.ppol~. "'''he,. 15B
PI.,,,. ind PUl""'"n. jll-40, 108. 114. Ill. T.)·lor. Henry o..oorn. 1-16-'\9
no Ter"" of A"ib. IIII
1'o"'I"-·ii. h.I)·.•ile "f "II"." 'PI''''itlon Tcnulho n . SII. 1811
(1876\, 1711 ~o", the Stud"e. S7. 2117
PO"U'" Pilile. i9-S0 Thorn.. Aqu!n.~. on angd •. 147, 01' ,he 1111·
Pt'n""~,". 8mli")'. \'''' uf "bro.n oppultlon m.cul.,,, roncopno". 1'\9. IIIS-9S, In
(1871).1711 o..",e·, 0."", Ca.r>oI'y. 14]; on f",h. I 59; on
Pal'<', """111, 25-Z6. 67. 78 10",. and """h •. 101, on Mar)"\ Mcdl,mx.
Pucum. Gioromo, Arlgriu, In lOfc", 99 on
Tol;.toy. L N. 27. 46
Qull,en. Johll1ne.. JIM. 110 Tornl"" , Too",., r. 158
 INDEX Of nO"H NAMH 16J

Trudgold. V4.ren. 100 W.ndel. J.e.t Polm.,.. I H

TnII\t.Councllol (15iS_61j. 10. 199 W.. nrr. MOlin •. 199-200
Tudjm:rn. F•• njo. qUOIed. J Wcllet.Rent. 165-66
Wdli.Jm •. Gfl.l~ Hunmon, 156
V.mlnl,l~. Gnosdc t~~he •. +7 Wil>d>eMrr pgJter. 100-2. 2011
V~n Eyek. lw. '-"':iII• . 6 \'.brdswonh. WU!i.Jm. £<dt<jOlll.w .1C.wn,
Vuican. first Coundl 0((1869-70). 183. 16\-66
200.206.21 1-12
VUinn. SKond Coundl or (1962-65). 13. Zech..l.h. 70. 81-81. 104. s.. """ Indu
91.211-13 of Bibhn1 References
'V;,lhquu. Diego. ,,,,,_ hit c.ap. ... 188.

'"
'V;,rdJ.. Gluse~. A.. "'dn., 2: 51_ M.M. 126
..
Zeon. Toni. sculprure of Second m. ]8.

Zola. Emile. 180

Verrneff. Joh.onnt'l. AIlrpy III Fo~ •. 80.92-93 Zwingll. Ulrich. IS 4-\5 . 1S8
 Index of Biblical References

(;""""1 (>'2 4- 26
"
17

"
115
."
26-27, 91-9J, IB-H.
H17

Dll:muonomy
"
n,
20 8. 212
20, 44 , H. 69,141 " "
n. 121-22 1. ICings
41, 15
51-4 "
14. 201
211-12
1915
3+.207

"
'" '"
'"
219-21 "" J... d~
11 .5
'"
II 18 10

"
11 11- ~,

'" 14-1 S
"od~
1:2.14 J I. 40
18: 2
'"
'"
1520-21 "
28, 97
PYlms
n il
"
5 IS 33 , 189, 190.195
NU'l\~rs 68 1II
"
" '" 68 H
"
 I~IHX OF BjH IC~l jUH~HIC iS 16S

81 .6
'" 2 1I , ..
'" n
116:11 1:12,19
42 -3

,
41-4-2

"
f'rm.""b, 4: 3, 6

" 5_37 149n32

" ll:ll
9: I
3 I : 10 27-28,81,91-94 11 : 1J '"
31.104
12:46
"
"
SongofSoois 13 H
]:5 IS-26,61.18 16 : 18 10- 11
4: 12 19-30 17:1-9 H9n31
I7 3 35.74
''''''' 2111
'"
"
6: I 26 , 13 20-11
1, 14 17,28-29,113 2616-2 8 10- 11

"
212 26:36-37 149032
15:8 34, 20 I, 108, 209-10 27 46 128- 29

"
40, I 5 17:52-53
'"
"
4.1:9 8J 17:60
538
64 :8 '"
8J
28:18-19 \I. I I

M~fk

""
kremlah 3:31
3:21
'" 11:29

"
14:22-25
Ezd.iel
I 1:14
" L","

"" "
12:17 l:I-3
37: 2 1:8-13 24So+f

"
47 _I 126-28 7,16, 99, 14S~+4
1: 28 1.13- 14.90,98,1 4 5,169 ,
D.o.nid 197-98
8: I
" 132-33
l:14 "
72,113,1 +4 ,190
Jod 134-35 11.29
2;18 31,171 1:35 72,157,190,191-98

"
3:2 84-85 1:36
I :37 n ,83
Wi>dom of Solomon I: 38 20,81,81 - 91,143.145,

"
M>llhew
'" I 42-43
lB. 160. 211
14,16,55. Ill. 156
1: 46-55 20, B, 91 ,179, HS. 219 ,

"
1:1-17 no
1:18 11.190 2;1 16-17

"
LIO l2 2:4

'"
1: 2 I 2 :35 19,125,11 6, 170.208 -9
1:22-23 I 7. 29 1:48
'"
l"k~ (,..",.Id) 20:28 ;s
l; 2 II H 1-16 Bi
liS IS 169 -1) 11. 88
J lJ-J8 H

'"
7: -11 '"
HI
"""'m,
" .
I 0 III
10.lB-H
14 10
31-32
lS. 165
24411 30
"
'"
.,
l28
."
19-20
1119-10
HH "" ., "'"
2326
" -I,ll 10

"
2141 121-12 512. IS
!) U
1)51
.
"
'00
•

'"
9-11 .
I 5. 19

'" "'
H27

JOhLl
I0 I 7
110-14 .
19.159

"
11-11.40
"1;12-13 12.191
16:26

12.3 1. 40. 82
1: 14
1:17 ,. 71-1.3 8 118- 19, 120

"".
J:V 1 5- I 6

"'"
9:5
1:29 92-1-27

"
11-11
11:23-25
II
112 '"
"'"
I) 12
un "
141. IS9. 122
.,. "
-I 4 26

'" '"
'"
1545.47 42. H;--I7
611-32

"
ISH 3-1.101. 106. 209-10
7 1. 5
10JS
12 26
14 18
1915-21
'"
lS

"
19.126.139,206-7
..
1 CoriIHhhn.

6: I ""
I9 41
" C..b" .. ns
111-14 29. 88
1,10
'"
.."
1.14 84 -8S
217
2: 18
759
.
31.177

'00
'"
14- 15.52.82

9 I . 31
10,9-16
Bi

"" ..
~phes;.ns

lS
I 6: 9 SH
'"
189'-10
1923-41 "
S6. 220
6: 5
6:10-17 '"
2-I+oS
 INDEX OF BIBLICAL ~EF~~~"CH 267

Philippll1U
1:~-7 S9 , H 106-7
'.me<
I:I7 40 - 4 1
1:10-11 >0, 2:21-23 20
1:14 19-10

"""t.
CoIossl'lIu

"
414
J

'"
2,S
I TimOIhy
1:5
6.11 '"
2HaS ..
, ,,"U
105-7

2 TlIDOthy
., IHIlli
'"
1 John
'"
"
1 :7
Hrhrt'WS
77 OS Reveluion
10:5
'" 1:6
'"
I1 1
J];8-12 "
20
Ul
ll: J "
31 -33, 93, 177

"
1 1-38 14:6-7 B
 About the Author

Jaros\a" Pelikan, Sterling Profes.~or Emeritus of History at Yale Uni-

VNsity. has received morc than thirty-five honorary degrees from univer-
sities allover the world, as well as awuds and mcdills from numerous
scholarly societies and institutions, He was named a Senior Fdlow at the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1982 - 83 and
again in \990-91. The Jefferson Award, the highest honor given by the
u.s. government to a scholar in the humanities, WAS conferred on him in
1983, and he was honored with the Haskins Medal from the Medieval
Academy of America in 1985, He received the American Academy of
Rdigion's Award for Excellence in 1989 and in 1990 was awarded the
Newberry Library's "Umanit.:i" medal. The New York Public Library
honored him with its "Literary Lions " Award in 1992, and in the same
year he received the Jan Amos Komensky medal of the Czech and Slovak
Federal Republic. He has served on the U.S. President's Committee on the
Arts .md the Humanities since 1994 and is currently President of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Among the many lectureships Pelikan has held are the Gauss Lec-
tures. PrincetOn University; the Gifford Lectures. University of Aber-
deen; the Jefferson Lectures. National Endowment for the Humanities;
the Jerome i.e<:mres, American Academy in Rome md University of
Michigan; the Mellon Lectures. National Gallery of Art; and the William
Clyde De Vane Lectures, Yale University.
Mary Through dK Cmtutlt$ is the thirty-fourth book Jaroslav Pelikan has
written. His first book. From Luther to Kierkegaard, was published in 1950.
His five-volume work , Tht Christian Trodition: A History of the Dtvdopmmt of
Doctrine, 19 71-89 . is widely acknowledged as the foremost history of its
kind. Among the many edited volumes he has overseen is the twtnty-
two-volume edition of Luther's Works. 1955 -71. Other books by Pelikan
published by YaJe University Press are IJaodopmmt of Christion Doctrine, 1969;
The Vindication of Tradition, 1984; }<sUS Through the Crnturi ts, 1985; Imago [ki .
1990; The Idea of the UniwfSity-A Rtaamination, 1992; Christianity and Classical
Cuhurt, 1993 ; Must the Thtologian. 1995; and Tbt Refonnation of 1M Bible/The
Bible of the Reformatwn. 1996.
 ,
,,
(O!\lln"..! I;"", /"",; I!dp

Spen>.er, ind MIlton to y...urd,\nmh, George

EliOl, ,wd ''''''ll''''--J~ well a~ in ml1~ic ~Jld

~rt. and he describes the mincuJou~ olj)p;m-

Liom of Mary Lhal haw: heen expt:rienced
hy t1w txlmmon people.

\.Va!, Muy humin or divine' Should she be

re\'cre<1 (or her humility or her strength 1
Wholt is her pb~ in 1IeOl.\'en' WlIil"""r uur
in~\\~ lO the>.c qU~lions, Muy remolins a
symbol of hope and sololce, l WOUlill, '''')'\
Pclik.ln, for all , ...J.""" ."d.11 rnsons,

/o1r05lo\ PdikuD is Sterling Profe~sor of Hl~tory

Em~_r iUJ' n Y.k Un iverslty_) Ie ha5 received
honorary degree> from unin'_rSlliL", III o\'.:r
th.: world. as wdl 3s medah olnd ~wards

frlH n many ~cho l arly societies and Instltu -

liom, includ ing the Jdlerson Awud of lh ..
N'lion~ Endo\\ment for tl,,! Humanities,
the highc,t honor conf,ared hy uu,: U.S
go'enUllenl on . >;<:Ilobr in the humanities.
HI' is currently presidelll of the Americoill
Audemy of Ans ind Scien~. Hi~ book Jesus
ThrouSb lhor Ctnlun(S. pu blishcd In 1985. \\.is

hilled by the NrwYoJtTinKs Boo/,. &>1 .... .iS .. i

rich ind expinsi".: deso-iplion of Jesu~'s
imINCI 011 ~hc gCIlcral hmory of culttl!l'''
olild by Ule N.... Yod.: Rt\ i"", <If Book, ~~ ··lml-
1i.11(1)· mccessful "

i'r1n ,,,1 in ,h. US ... .

,,"I~,;".""", ... , SiruuJl< M",j",_ lli _ '..... '00 {~". i :1.
I H.!, l ;,11 .. ;. '1<-g1; lin,,;, 1'1"«"'0. (Erich u:»I"~'­
An R,·."",,·<, NX)
li ~
UntlerSlty
p""