For Jewish and Mohammedan traditions with pv to Mary, see Canon Meyrick’s article ‘Mary the Virgin,’ in Smith’s DB. The only point which need be mentioned here is the Jewish slander reported by Celsus,* to the effect that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary and a soldier Pandera.
B. As early as the 2nd cent. we find Eve made a type of , as Adam was of our Lord. As Eve had ‘brought about the curse by listening to the Serpent, so Mary the blessing Ἷ listening to the Angel.t Still she shared man’s fallen nature, and was guilty of actual sin. So Ireneus (iii. 16. 7), ‘Dominus repellens ejus intempestivam festi- nationem dixit: Quid mihi et tibi est, mulier?’
So Origen (Hom. in Lue. 17) interprets the pro- |
phecy of Simeon, ‘A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also,’ of the doubts felt by Mary, in common with the apostles, at the crucifixion : *Si omnes peccaverunt et egent gloria Dei, justifi- cati gratia ejus et redempti, utique et Maria illo ‘empore scandalizata est’ ;} and still more strongly Tertullian (de Carne Christi, 7), and Chrysostom, commenting on Mt 1258. (Hom. in Matt. 44), where
he says Mary called down her Son’s rebuke by her |
presumption (ἀπόνοια). 8 Augustine|| was among the earliest of the
Fathers who thought it possible that she might be
an exception to the rule that all have committed
actual sins; though he allows that she shared the
common corruption of humanity,{] and quotes Lk | esus was |
11” as showing that even the mother of blessed, not because in her the Word was made flesh, but because she kept the word of God.
It does not appear that we have any direct evi- dence of prayer being made, or worship offered, to Mary during the first four centuries,** except by the obscure sect of the Collyridians already mentioned, against whom Epiphanius lays down the rule, ἐν τιμῇ ἔστω Maa, ὁ δὲ Πατὴρ καὶ Tlds xal”Ayov Πνεῦμα προσκυνείσθω" τὴν Μαρίαν μηδεὶς προσκυνείτω. But the
* Orig. c. Cels. 1. 89, This calumny is denounced in the Koran |
(iv. 155) as one of the sins of the Jewish people.
+ Justin M., Dial. 100; Iren. iii. 22. 4, v. 19. 1, ‘si eainobedierat Deo, sed hme suasa est obedire Deo, uti virginis Evw virgo Maria fleret advocata. Et quemadmodum adstrictum est morti genus humanum per virginem, salvatur per virginem’; cf. also Tert. de Carne Christi, 17.
1 So Basil, Epist. 260, and others; cf. Hilary, Ps. 118°, where
it is said that even Mary has to pass through the purgatorial |
re.
§ Stephanus cites other instances from Chrysostom.
|| De Nat. et Grat. c. 36, where in answer to Pelagius, who had given a list of sinless saints from the OT, concluding with the names of Elisabeth and Mary, ‘quam dicit sine peccato confiteri necesse esse pietati,’ Augustine maintains that all had sinned ‘excepta sancta virgine Maria de qua propter honorem Domini nullam prorsus, cum de tis agitur, haberi volo questionem.’ Ephraem Syrus and Ambrose are quoted to the same effect.
4 See c.. Julian. v. 15, quoted in Livius, p. 246 f.
** Smith’s DB, 8.v. Mary THe Vira, vol, ii. p. 267; Tyler’s Roman Worship of the Virgin.
VOL. 11l.—19
cultus and invocation of the martyrs, and belief in their miraculous power, had been growing up as early as the 3rd cent.,* and the gradual paganiz- ing of the Church, which followed the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the empire, led, in many places, to the substitution of Christian saints for the old local divinities.t Indeed the continued use of the old temples and ceremonies and images under new names might seem to be countenanced by St. Paul’s words in reference to the Athenian altar ‘whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.’ Then the worship of the Lares, the apotheosis of the dead, the almost blasphemous homage pad to the living emperor in the East, pre- pared the way for the worship of saints. he votaries of Demeter and Persephone and of other female deities found it easier to transfer their alle- giance to the Christian Church, when they were permitted to make their vows there to Mary as the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven;t+ while at the same time these titles were demanded by the more fanatical Christians, who claimed divine honours for the ideal and prototype of virginity, which they held to be the highest of all virtues. The movement in this direction was especially favoured by the reaction against the Nestorian heresy, condemned at the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431—a reaction shown in the multiplication of pictures of the Virgin, and in a readiness to accept, as authentic, any supposed tradition or revelation which tended to her glory. On the other hand, the Divinity of Christ tended to obscure his Humanity. The loving sympathy of one who could be touched with the feeling of our infirmities was transferred to Mary, whose media- tion with her Son, the stern and terrible Judge, was every day felt to be more neces: to weak and erring mortals. Add to this the chivalrous sentiments and the respect for woman among the northern nations of Europe, and we shall not be surprised at the subsequent developments of Menslainy: The language of the Bible, especially in the Vulgate, was strained to support this: the name ‘ Mariam’ itself received various interpreta- tions, of which the most popular was Stella Maris: the promise to the seed of the woman in Gn 3'* was transferred to the woman herself in accord- ance with the Vulgate mistranslation, ‘ipsa con- teret caput tuum’: the greeting in Lk 1* χαῖρε κεχαριτωμένη (Vulg. ‘ave gratia plena’) was a proof that Mary was herself a fountain of grace: her reply to the angel (οὐ γινώσκω ἄνδρα) is taken to be a vow: the words by which she was entrusted to the care of the beloved disciple, ἰδοὺ ὁ υἱός σου, describe her relation to all true members of the Church. She is the Bride of the Canticles, the Woman persecuted by the dragon in the Apocalypse, the Wisdom of whom Solomon speaks, whom the Lord possessed in the beginning as His daily delight, rejoicing always before Him. Christian orators, be- rinning with Proclus, patriarch of Constantinople in the middle of the 5th cent. (who spoke of the Mother of God, ἡ @eoréxos,§ as ‘the only bridge be-