MARIOLATRY
751
MARIOLATRY
ings are supplicated as from one who is able to bestow them. Ill all devotions she has a share. The Ave Ala- lia accompanies the Pater iVoster. ' Evening, morning, and at noon,' said the Psalmist, ' will I pray unto thee, and cry aloud ;' the pious Koman Catholic transfers these services to the Virgin. In tender chiklhood he is taught to cherish for her the profoundest reverence and the liighest affection ; throughout life she is the object of his daily regard, and five solemn festivals, annually observed to her honor, call forth his ardent love and zeal, and in the hour of death he is taught to place reli- ance on her mercy. To the ignorant devotee she is more than Christ, than God ; he believes that she can command her Son, that to her intercession nothing can be denied, and that to her power all things are possible." But if the Latin Church be adjudged guilty of Mariola- try, it must not be forgotten that the same sentence of condemnation should fall still more heavily on the Greek Church ; for " it cannot be denied," says Pusey {Eirenicon, ii, 425), " that the orthodox Greek Church does even surpass the Church of Rome in exaltation of the Blessed Virgin in their devotions."
Mariolatry likewise appears in the favorite prayer to Mary, the angelic greeting, or the Ave Maria, which in the Catholic devotions runs parallel with the Pater Noster, and of wliich we had occasion to speak above. It takes its name from the initial words of the saluta- tion of (iabriel to the Holy Virgin at the annunciation of the birth of Christ. It consists of three parts : (1) The salutation of the angel (Luke i, 28): Ave Maria, gratia plena, Domhius tecum! (2) The words of Eliza- beth (Luke i, 42) : Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et beneJic- tusfructus rentris tui, Jesus. (3) The later unscriptural addition, which contains the prayer proper, and is offen- sive to the Protestant and aU sound Christian feeling: Sancta Maria, mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis. Amen. (For the English, etc., see Ave JNIaria.) " Formerly this third part, which gave the formula the character of a prayer, was traced back to the anti-Nestorian Council of Ephesus in 431, which sanctioned the expression mater Dei, or Dei fjen- itri.r (.^toj-oKOf) : but Koman archaeologists (e. g. Mast, in Wetzer und Welte [Rom. CathoL], Kirchen-Lexikon, i, 5(j3) now concede that it is a much later addition, made in the beginning of the IGth century (1508), and that the closing Avords, nunc et in hora mortis, were add- ed even after that time by the Franciscans. But even tlie first two parts did not come into general use as a standing formula of prayer until the loth century. From that date the Ave Maria stands in the Roman Church upon a level with the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed, and with them forms the basis of the rosary" (Sctiafl^, Ck. Hist, ii, 424, 425).
The chief festivals of the Virgin, common to the Western and Eastern churches, celebrating the most im- portant facts and fictions of her life, and in some degree running parallel with the festivals of the birth, resur- rection, and ascension of Christ, arc the Conception (q. v.), the Nativity (q. v.), the Purification (q. v.), the Annunciation (q. v.), the Visitation (q. v.), and the As- sumption ((}. v.). All these festivals are observed also in the English Church, but from a quite diff'erent stand- point, of course. The Koman Church has, besides these, several special festivals, with appropriate offices — all, however, of minor solemnity. See Makv, the Vikcjin.
Orifjin of Mariolatry. — We have detailed somewhat at length the views held by the Gra!co-Roman theolo- gians on the adoration they consider due to tlie Virgin Mary to afford a fair insight into jNIariolatry as now practiced. It remains, however, to examine how the veneration of JNIary degenerated into the morsfiip of Mary, a worship which itself "was originally only a re- flection of the worship of Christ . . . designed to con- tribute to the glorifying of Christ" (Schaff, ii, 410). All unbiassed historians agree in regarding the worsliip of Mary as an echo of ancient heathenism. Polytheism was so deeply rooted among the non-Israelites of the