§ 82. MAKIOLATBY. 423
ridian women, blasphemous and dangerous to tL c soul.' Tho entire silence of history respecting the worship of the Yirgin down to the end of the fourth century, proves clearly that it was foreign to the original spirit of Christianity, and belongs among the many innovations of the post-Nicene age.
In the beginning of the fifth century, however, the worshif of saints appeared in full bloom, and then Mary, by reason of her singular reUition to the Lord, was soon placed at the head, as the most blessed queen of the heavenly host. To her was accorded the hyperdulia {virephovkeia) — to anticipate here the later scholastic distinction sanctioned by the council of Trent — that is, the highest degree of veneration, in distinction from mere dulia {SovXeia), which belongs to all saints and angels, and from latria (Xarpela), which, properly speaking, is due to God alone. From that time numerous churches and altars were dedicated to the holy Mother of God, the perpetual Virgin ; among them also the church at Ephesus in which the auti-]^estorian council of 431 had sat. Justinian I., in a law, implored her intercession with God for the restoration of the Roman empire, and on the dedication of the costly altar of the church of St. Sophia he expected all blessings for church and empire from her powerful prayers. His general, Narses, like the knights in the Middle Age, was unwilling to go into battle till he had secured her protection. Pope Boniface lY. in 608 turned the Pantheon in Rome into a temple of Mary ad martyres : the pagan Olympus into a Christian heaven of gods. Subsequently even her images (made after an original pretending to have come from Luke) were divinely worship])ed, and, in the prolific legends of the superstitious Middle Age, perforined countless miracles, before some of which the mu'acles ai the gospel history grow dim. She became almost coordinate with Clirist, a joint redeemer, invested with most of His own attributes and acts of grace. The popular belief ascribed to her, as to Christ, a sinless conception, a sinless birth, refiurrection and ascension to heaven, and a participation of all power id heaven and on earth. She became the centre of de-
' Ad Haer. Collyrid. : 'E;/ Ti/^p ia-rw Mapia, 6 5e Holttip , . . itpi iKvvsiatia f^v Mao'tav ur]5e\s n pos KVi>e it ca
124 THIRD TEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
votion, ciiltus, and art, the popular symbol of power, of glory, and of tlie liual victory of Catholicism over all heresies.' The Greek and Roman churches vied throughout the Middle Age (and do so still) in the apotheosis of the human mother with the divine-human child Jesus in her arms, till the lieformatioa freed a large part of Latin Christendom from this unscriptuial semi-idolatry and concentrated the affection and adoration of believers upon the crucified and risen Saviour of the world, the only Mediator between God and man.
A word more : respecting the favorite prayer to Mary, tho angelic greeting, or the Ave Ifaria, wdiich in the Catholic devotion runs parallel to the Pater Noster. It takes its name from the initial words of the salutation of Gabriel to the hoiy Virain at the annunciation of the birth of Christ. It consists of tliree parts :
(1) The salutation of the angel (Luke i. 28) : Ave Maria^ graticB plena^ Bominus tecum!
(2) The words of Elizabeth (Luke i. 42):
Benedicta tu in Tuiulierilus^ et lenedidus fructus ventri*
tui, Jesus.
(3) The later unscriptural addition, which contains the prayer proper, and is offensive to the Protestant and all soimd Christian feeling :
Sanda Maria^ mater Dei, ora 2>ro 7iobis ^eccaioribus, nunc et m lioro. mortis. Amen.
Formerly this third part, which gave the formula the charactor of a prayer, was traced back to the anli-ISrestorian council of E})hesus in 431, which sanctioned the expression mater Dei^ or Dei genit/i'ix {^eoT6Ko<i). But Kornan archaeologists = now concede that it is a much later addition, made in the beginning of the sixteenth century (1508), and that the closing words,
' The Greek church even goes so far as to suhstiiuto, in the colloctji, the name o< Mary for the name of Jesus, and to offer i)ctitions in the name of the Tlieotoiioa.
^ These words accordmg to the tcxtxis receptus, had been already spoken also by the angel, Luke i. 28: Ei/Ao77)^eV7j av fV ywail'ii', though they are wanting here in Important manuscripts, and are omitted by Tischendorf and Meyer is a later adihlion, from v. 42.
' Mast for example, in Wetzer und Welte's Kathol. Kirchenlexikon, vol i. p
(6a