THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the Christian religion, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of our own office, we declare, pronounce, and define the doctrine which holds that the most blessed Virgin Mary was, in the first instant of her conception, by the singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, with regard to the merits of Christ Jesus the Savior of the human race, preserved free from every stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore is to be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful."
The dogma was not sanctioned by an ecumenical council; but since the Vatican Council of 1870 declared the pope infallible, independent of a council, the decree of 1854 must be received as an infallible utterance, and cannot be changed. Pius IX. had previously, by an encyclical of Feb. 2, 1849, invited the opinion of the bishops on the subject, and received more than 600 affirmative answers; only four dissented from the pope's view; and fiftytwo, while agreeing with him in the dogma itself, deemed it inopportune to define and proclaim it. The dogma of the immaculate conception is the culmination of the steadily increasing veneration of Mary, which appears also in the multiplication of her festivals (see Mary, the Mother of Jesus). It and the Vatican dogma of papal infallibility are the characteristic features of modern Romanism, as distinct from the Romanism of the Council of Trent, and have widened the doctrinal breach between it and the Greek and Protestant Churches. No passage in favor of the dogma can be found in the Old or the New Testament; the interpretation of the protevangelium (Gen. iii. 15) 3. Scrip- which makes it refer to Mary and tural and Christ is ruled out by the Hebrew text. Patristic The Bible declares all men to be sin- Support ners, and in need of redemption, and Lacking, exempts Christ alone from this universal rule. Mary herself calls God her Savior (Luke i. 47), thereby including herself in the number of the saved, and implying a sense of personal sin and guilt. With this corresponds the predicate given her by the angel (Luke i. 28) — "endued with grace" (E.V- "highly favored"). The Christian Fathers, though many of them (even Augustine) exempted Mary from actual transgression, know nothing of her freedom from original sin, but always imply, and often expressly teach, the contrary. Some (as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Chrysostom) interpret Christ's words at the wedding of Cana (John ii. 4) as a rebuke of her unseasonable haste and immoderate ambition. The origin of the dogma must be sought in the apocryphal gospels. Its development was favored by the medieval sentiment of chivalry.
The schoolmen all agreed that Mary was exempt from actual transgression, but divided 4. Scholas- on the question whether she was contic ceived without sin and so was immac- Opinions. ulate from the very instant of her conception, or whether she was in the first instance tainted by original sin and made immaculate while she was yet in her mother's womb.
The latter view was taken by Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Bona ventura (In sententias, iii. 5, iv. 3). Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) rebuked the church of Lyons for celebrating a festival of the conception on the ground that it lacked the approval of the Church of reason, and of tradition. If Mary, he wrote was conceived without sin, why might not sinless conception be affirmed of all her ancestors back to the beginning. However, he expressed a willingness to yield in case the Church should appoint the festival (Epist. clxxiv.). Bonaventura and others argued against the doctrine on the ground that the conception of the body precedes its " animation " (i.e., the first association of the soul with the body). In the conception of the body there is always concupiscence, so that Mary's body, having been received in the usual way, was sinful, and contaminated the spirit when the spirit came into contact with the body. Duns Scotus (d. 1308) argued for Mary's exemption from hereditary sin from the first moment of her conception by a threefold chain of conjectures. (1) God's grace would be enhanced by releasing one individual from all taint of original sin from the very beginning. (2) By conferring this benefit upon Mary, God would bind Mary to Christ by the strongest ties. (3) The vacancy, left by the fallen angels in heaven, could be best filled by Mary, if she were preserved immaculate from the beginning. As the second Adam was preserved immaculate, so it was fitting the second Eve should be. Duns expressed his conclusion in these words: " If the thing does not contradict the Church and the Scriptures, its reality seems probable, because it is more excellent to affirm of Mary that she was not conceived in sin " (In sententias, iii. 3; cf. R. Seeberg, Duns Scotus, Leipsic, 1900, pp. 247 sqq. ; J. Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, Freiburg, 1890, pp. 424 sqq.). A warm controversy ensued over the immaculate conception between the followers of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The Synod of Paris in 1387 decided in favor of the Scotist position, but the controversy became so disturbing that Sixtus IV in 14S3 threatened with excommunication either party which denounced the other. The Council of Trent left the doctrine unsettled and referred back to the decree of Sixtus IV The Jesuits took it up and became its unyielding champions against the Jansenists and all other opponents. To their zeal and their influence over Pius IX. the triumph of the Scotist view, in 1854, is largely due.
(Philip ScHAFPf.) D. S. Schaff. The festival of the Immaculate Conception, of importance since the Reformation, is purely Western ; the feast of the Conception of St. 5. The Anne, which the emperor Emanuel Feast. Comnenus (d. 1180) commanded to celebrate on Sept. 9, for which George of Nicomedia (c. 880) wrote a homily, was rather a commemoration of the miraculous deliverance of Anne from the curse of sterility as narrated in the apocryphal gospels. The history of the feast is closely connected with that of the dogma. Although Augustine declares (De natura et gratia, xlii.) that out of reverence for the Lord he intends to exclude