the Western Church seems to be that found in the proceedings of
the synod of Salzburg in 800; it is also spoken of in the thirty-sixth
canon of the reforming synod of Mainz, held in 813. It was not
at that time universal, being mentioned as doubtful in the capitularies
of Charlemagne. The doctrine of the bodily assumption of the
Virgin into heaven, although extensively believed, and indeed flowing
as a natural theological consequence from that of her sinlessness, has
never been declared to be “de fide” by the Church of Rome, and is
still merely a “pia sententia.” (7) The Nativity of Mary (Nativitas,
γενέθλιον τῆς θεοτόκου) observed on the 8th of September, is first mentioned
in one of the homilies of Andrew of Crete (c. 750), and with
the Feasts of the Purification, the Annunciation and the Assumption,
it was appointed to be observed by the synod of Salzburg in 800, but
seems to have been unknown at that time in the Gallican Church,
and even two centuries later it was by no means general in Italy.
In the Roman Catholic Church a large number of minor festivals in
honour of the Virgin are locally celebrated; and all the Saturdays
of the year as well as the entire month of May are also regarded
as sacred to her.
The chief apocryphal writings concerned with Mary are the following: (1) The Portevangelium Jacobi, with its derivatives the De nativitate Mariae, the Evangelium Ps.-Matthaei, the Historia Josephi fabri lignarii (all edited by Tischendorf, Evangelia apocrypha; cf. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur, p. 20 seq. and Chronologie, i. 598 sqq.). (2) Evangelium Mariae (see Sitzungsberichte der Berlinischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1896, pp. 839–847). (3) Ιωάννου τοῦ θεολόγου λόγος εἰς τὴν κοίμησιν τῆς θεοτόκου, which appears in Latin under the title of the Transitus Mariae (ed. Tischendorf, Apocalypses apocryphae and Evangelia apocrypha, and see Bonnet, Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theol., 1880, pp. 222–247). (J. S. Bl.; K. L.)
MARY, known as Mary Magdalene, a woman mentioned in the Gospels, first in Luke viii. 2, as one of a company who “healed of evil spirits and infirmities . . . ministered unto them (Jesus and the apostles) of their substance.” It is said that seven demons were cast out of her, but this need not imply simply one occasion. Her name implies that she came from Magdala (el-Mejdel, 3 m. N.W. from Tiberias: in Matt. xv. 39 the right reading is not Magdala but Magadan). She went with Jesus on the last journey to Jerusalem, witnessed the Crucifixion, followed to the burial, and returned to prepare spices. John xx. gives an account of her finding the tomb empty and of her interview with the risen Jesus. Mary of Magdala has been confounded (1) with the unnamed fallen woman who in Simon’s house anointed Christ’s feet (Luke vii. 37); (2) with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus and Martha.
MARY I., queen of England (1516–1558), unpleasantly remembered
as “the Bloody Mary” on account of the religious
persecutions which prevailed during her reign, was the daughter
of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon, born in the earlier
years of their married life, when as yet no cloud had darkened
the prospect of Henry’s reign. Her birth occurred at Greenwich,
on Monday, the 18th February 1516, and she was baptized on
the following Wednesday, Cardinal Wolsey standing as her
godfather. She seems to have been a singularly precocious
child, and is reported in July 1520, when scarcely four and a
half years old, as entertaining some visitors by a performance on
the virginals. When she was little over nine she was addressed
in a complimentary Latin oration by commissioners sent over
from Flanders on commercial matters, and replied to them in
the same language “with as much assurance and facility as if
she had been twelve years old” (Gayangos, iii. pt. 1, 82). Her
father was proud of her achievements. About the same time
that she replied to the commissioners in Latin he was arranging
that she should learn Spanish, Italian and French. A great
part, however, of the credit of her early education was undoubtedly
due to her mother, who not only consulted the
Spanish scholar Vives upon the subject, but was herself Mary’s
first teacher in Latin. She was also well instructed in music,
and among her principal recreations as she grew up was that
of playing on the virginals and lute.
It was a misfortune that she shared with high-born ladies generally in those days that her prospects in life were made a matter of sordid bargaining from the first. Mary was little more than two years old when she was proposed in marriage to the dauphin, son of Francis I. Three years afterwards the French alliance was broken off, and in 1522 she was affianced to her cousin the young emperor Charles V. by the Treaty of Windsor. No one, perhaps, seriously expected either of these arrangements to endure; and, though we read in grave state papers of some curious compliments and love tokens (really the mere counters of diplomacy) professedly sent by the girl of nine to her powerful cousin, not many years passed away before Charles released himself from this engagement and made a more convenient match. In 1526 a rearrangement was made of the royal household, and it was thought right to give Mary an establishment of her own along with a council on the borders of Wales, for the better government of the Marches. For some years she accordingly kept her court at Ludlow, while new arrangements were made for the disposal of her hand. She was now proposed as a wife, not for the dauphin as before, but for his father Francis I., who had just been redeemed from captivity at Madrid, and who was only too glad of an alliance with England to mitigate the severe conditions imposed on him by the emperor. Wolsey, however, on this occasion, only made use of the princess as a bait to enhance the terms of the compact, and left Francis free in the end to marry the emperor’s sister.
It was during this negotiation, as Henry afterwards pretended, that the question was first raised whether Henry’s own marriage with Catherine was a lawful one. Grammont, bishop of Tarbes, who was one of the ambassadors sent over by Francis to ask the princess in marriage, had, it was said, started an objection that she might possibly be considered illegitimate on account of her mother having been once the wife of her father’s brother. The statement was a mere pretence to shield the king when the unpopularity of the divorce became apparent. It is proved to be untrue by the strongest evidence, for we have pretty full contemporary records of the whole negotiation. On the contrary, it is quite clear that Henry, who had already for some time conceived the project of a divorce, kept the matter a dead secret, and was particularly anxious that the French ambassadors should not know it, while he used his daughter’s hand as a bait for a new alliance. The alliance itself, however, was actually concluded by a treaty dated Westminster, the 30th of April 1527, in which it was provided, as regards the Princess Mary, that she should be married either to Francis himself or to his second son Henry duke of Orleans. But the real object was only to lay the foundation of a perfect mutual understanding between the two kings, which Wolsey soon after went into France to confirm.
During the next nine years the life of Mary, as well as that of her mother, was rendered miserable by the conduct of Henry VIII. in seeking a divorce. During most of that period mother and daughter seem to have been kept apart. Possibly Queen Catherine had the harder trial; but Mary’s was scarcely less severe. Removed from court and treated as a bastard, she was, on the birth of Anne Boleyn’s daughter, required to give up the dignity of princess and acknowledge the illegitimacy of her own birth. On her refusal her household was broken up, and she was sent to Hatfield to act as lady-in-waiting to her own infant half-sister. Nor was even this the worst of her trials; her very life was in danger from the hatred of Anne Boleyn. Her health, moreover, was indifferent, and even when she was seriously ill, although Henry sent his own physician, Dr Buttes, to attend her, he declined to let her mother visit her. So also at her mother’s death, in January 1536, she was forbidden to take a last farewell of her. But in May following another change occurred. Anne Boleyn, the real cause of all her miseries, fell under the king’s displeasure and was put to death. Mary was then urged to make a humble submission to her father as the means of recovering his favour, and after a good deal of correspondence with the king’s secretary, Cromwell, she actually did so. The terms exacted of her were bitter in the extreme, but there was no chance of making life tolerable otherwise, if indeed she was permitted to live at all; and the poor friendless girl, absolutely at the mercy of a father who could brook no contradiction, at length subscribed an act of submission, acknowledging the king as “Supreme Head of the Church of England under Christ,” repudiating the pope’s
