of relegating the God-man redeemer for ordinary minds into
a far away region of “remote and awful Godhead,” so that
the need for a mediator to deal with the very Mediator could
not fail to be felt. On the other hand, the religious instincts of
mankind are very ready to pay worship, in grosser or more
refined forms, to the idea of womanhood; at all events many
of those who became professing Christians at the political fall
of Paganism entered the Church with such instincts (derived
from the nature-religions in which they had been brought up)
very fully developed. Probably it ought to be added that the
comparative colourlessness with which the character of Mary
is presented, not only in the canonical gospels but even in the
most copious of the apocrypha, left greater scope for the untrammelled
exercise of devout imagination than was possible
in the case of Christ, in the circumstances of whose humiliation
and in whose recorded utterances there were many things
which the religious consciousness found difficulty in understanding
or in adapting to itself. At all events, from the time
of the council of Ephesus, to exhibit figures of the Virgin and
Child became the approved expression of orthodoxy, and the
relationship of motherhood in which Mary had been formally
declared to stand to God[1] was instinctively felt to give the
fullest and freest sanction of the Church to that invocation of
her aid which had previously been resorted to only hesitatingly
and occasionally. Previously to the council of Ephesus, indeed,
the practice had obtained complete recognition, so far as we
know, in those circles only in which one or other of the numerous
redactions of the Transitus Mariae passed current.[2] There
we read of Mary’s prayer to Christ: “Do Thou bestow Thine
aid upon every man calling upon, or praying to, or naming
the name of Thine handmaid”; to which His answer is, “Every
soul that calls upon Thy name shall not be ashamed, but shall
find mercy and support and confidence both in the world that
now is and in that which is to come in the presence of My Father
in the heavens.” But Gregory of Nazianzus also, in his panegyric
upon Justina, mentions with incidental approval that
in her hour of peril she “implored Mary the Virgin to come
to the aid of a virgin in her danger.”[3] Of the growth of the
Marian cultus, alike in the East and in the West, after the
decision at Ephesus it would be impossible to trace the history,
however slightly, within the limits of the present article. Justinian
in one of his laws bespeaks her advocacy for the empire, and
he inscribes the high altar in the new church of St Sophia
with her name. Narses looks to her for directions on the field
of battle. The emperor Heraclius bears her image on his
banner. John of Damascus speaks of her as the sovereign
lady to whom the whole creation has been made subject by
her son. Peter Damian recognizes her as the most exalted
of all creatures, and apostrophizes her as deified and endowed
with all power in heaven and in earth, yet not forgetful of our
race.[4] In a word, popular devotion gradually developed the
entire system of doctrine and practice which Protestant controversialists
are accustomed to call by the name of Mariolatry.
With reference to this much-disputed phrase it is always to
be kept in mind that the directly authoritative documents,
alike of the Greek and of the Roman Church, distinguish formally
between latria and dulia, and declare that the “worship” to be
paid to the mother of God must never exceed that superlative
degree of dulia which is vaguely described as hyperdulia. But
the comparative reserve shown by the council of Trent in its
decrees, and even in its catechism,[5] on this subject has not
been observed by individual theologians, and in view of the
fact of the canonization of some of these (such as Liguori)—a
fact guaranteeing the absence of erroneous teaching from
their writings—it does not seem unfair, to hold the Roman
Church responsible for the natural interpretations and just
inferences which may be drawn even from apparently exaggerated
expressions in such works as the well-known Glories of
Mary and others frequently quoted in controversial literature.
There is a good résumé of Catholic developments of the cultus
of Mary in Pusey’s Eirenicon.
The following are the principal feasts of the Virgin in the order in which they occur in the ecclesiastical year. (1) That of the Presentation (Praesentatio B. V. M., τὰ εἰσόδια τῆς θεοτόκου), to commemorate the beginning of her stay in the Temple, as recorded in the Protevangelium Jacobi. It is believed to have originated in the East in the 8th century, the earliest allusion to it being made by George of Nicomedia (9th century); Manuel Comnenus made it universal for the Eastern Empire, and in the modern Greek Church it is one of the five great festivals in honour of the Deipara. It was introduced into the Western Church late in the 14th century, and, after having been withdrawn from the calendar by Pius V., was restored by Sixtus V., the day observed in both East and West being the 21st of November. It is not mentioned in the English calendar. (2) The Feast of the Conception (Conceptio B. V. M., Conceptio immaculata B. V. M., σύλληψις τῆς ἁγίας Ἄννης), observed by the Roman Catholic Church on the 8th of December, and by all the Eastern Churches on the 9th of December, has already been explained; in the Greek Church it only ranks as one of the middle festivals of Mary. (3) The Feast of the Purification (Occursus, Obviatio, Praesentatio, Festum SS Simeonis et Annae, Purificatio, Candelaria, ὑπαπαντή, ὑπαντή) is otherwise known as Candlemas. (4) The Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary (Annunciatio, Εὐαγγελισμός). It may be mentioned that at the council of Toledo in 656 it was decreed that this festival should be observed on the 18th of December, in order to keep clear of Lent. (5) The Feast of the Visitation (Visitatio B. V. M.) was instituted by Urban VI., promulgated in 1389 by Boniface IX., and reappointed by the council of Basel in 1441 in commemoration of the visit paid by Mary to Elizabeth. It is observed on the 2nd of July, and has been retained in the English calendar. (6) The Feast of the Assumption (Dormitio, Pausatio, Transitus, Depositio, Migratio, Assumptio, καίμησις, μετάστασις, ἀνάληψις) has reference to the apocryphal story related in several forms in various documents of the 4th century condemned by Pope Gelasius. Their general purport is that as the time drew nigh for “the most blessed Virgin” (who is also spoken of as “Holy Mary,” “the queen of all the saints,” “the holy spotless Mother of God”) to leave the world, the apostles were miraculously assembled round her deathbed at Bethlehem on the Lord’s Day, whereupon Christ descended with a multitude of angels and received her soul. After “the spotless and precious body” had been laid in the tomb, “suddenly there shone round them (the apostles) a miraculous light,” and it was taken up into heaven. The first Catholic writer who relates this story is Gregory of Tours (c. 590); Epiphanius two centuries earlier had declared that nothing was known as to the circumstances of Mary’s death and burial; and one of the documents of the council of Ephesus implies a belief that she was buried in that city. The Sleep of the Theotokos is observed in the Greek Church as a great festival on the 15th of August; the Armenian Church also commemorates it, but the Ethiopic Church celebrates her death and burial on two separate days. The earliest allusion to the existence of such a festival in
- ↑ The term θεοτόκας does not actually occur in the canons of Ephesus. It is found, however, in the creed of Chalcedon.
- ↑ It is true that Irenaeus (Haer. v. 19, 1) in the passage in which he draws his well-known parallel and contrast between the first and second Eve (cf. Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 100), to the effect that “as the human race fell into bondage to death by a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin,” takes occasion to speak of Mary as the “advocata” of Eve; but it seems certain that this word is a translation of the Greek συνήγορος, and implies hostility and rebuke rather than advocacy.
- ↑ It is probable that the commemorations and invocations of the Virgin which occur in the present texts of the ancient liturgies of “St James” and “St Mark” are due to interpolation. In this connexion ought also to be noted the chapter in Epiphanius (Haer., 79) against the “Collyridians,” certain women in Thrace, Scythia and Arabia, who were in the habit of worshipping the Virgin (ἀεὶ παρθένον) as a goddess, the offering of a cake (καλλυρίδα τινα) being one of the features of their worship. He rebukes them for offering the worship which was due to the Trinity alone; “let Mary be held in honour, but by no means worshipped.” The cultus was probably a relic of heathenism; cf. Jer. xliv. 19.
- ↑ “Numquid quia ita deificata, ideo nostrae humanitatis oblita es? Nequaquam, Domina. . . . Data est tibi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra. Nil tibi impossibile.” Serm. de nativ. Mariae, ap. Gieseler, KG., Bd. ii. Abth. 1.
- ↑ The points taught in the catechism are—that she is truly the Mother of God, and the second Eve, by whose means we have received blessing and life; that she is the Mother of Pity, and very specially our advocate; that her merits are highly exalted, and that her dispositions towards us are extremely gracious; that her images are of the utmost utility. In the Missal her intercessions (though alluded to in the canon and elsewhere) are seldom directly appealed to except in the Litany and in some of the later offices, such as those for the 8th of September and for the Festival of the Seven Sorrows (decree by Benedict XIII. in 1727). Noteworthy are the versicles in the office for the 8th of December (The Feast of the Immaculate Conception), “Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te,” and “Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, Maria, quia fecit tibi magna qui potens est.”
