Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
devotion to her as the introduction of the Ave Maria or angelic salutation as a normal supplement to the Lord's Prayer in popular devotions. After the middle of the twelfth century it spread from France, where St. Bernard aided its diffusion, to Germany, England, Spain, and other countries, and by the end of the thirteenth was practically universal in western Christendom. The introduction of the recitation of the Angelus (q.v.) three times a day and of the Rosary (q.v.), with its ten Aves for one Pater noster, tended to increase the influence of this short and easily remembered form of prayer. Devotion to Mary was promoted zealously by the religious orders. The Teutonic Knights chose her for their patroness; the Dominicans aided with the rosary from 1270; the Franciscans were ardent advocates of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; the Carmelites boasted of her special favor, asserting that their sixth general, St. Simon Stock, had seen a vision (1246) in which she gave him a scapular with the promise that he who died wearing it should be delivered from the eternal fire.
III. Feasts of Mary: The development of the cultus of the Virgin is marked all along its course by the multiplication of festivals in her honor. The feast of the Annunciation, the annual commemoration of the Incarnation, was probably observed as early as the fourth century (see Annunciation, Feast of the). The feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, or of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (known in old English usage as Candlemas), based on Luke ii. 22 sqq., and thus reckoned also among the feasts of Christ, occurs forty days after Christmas (Feb. 2), according to Lev. xii. 2-7. It is said by Georgius Hamartolus and Cedrenus to have been instituted under Justin I. (c. 526), by Nicephorus under Justinian in 541. Western writers (Ildephonsus, and later Durand) connect it with the ancient Roman lustrations which Numa is said to have instituted in February in honor of Februus, the purifying god, and to take the place of which the Christian festival was established. In the West, its celebration was specially referred to the Virgin. In Bede's time it was usual to go in procession through the towns with burning candles. The feast of the Nativity was unknown in the time of Augustine. Early evidences for its existence are Andrew of Crete (c. 650), for Rome the Calendarium Frontonis, for Spain Ildephonsus, for France Paschasius Radbert. The reason for its assignment to Sept. 8 is unknown. The feast of the Assumption commemorates the assumption or corporal translation of Mary into heaven after her death. The festival in its later signification is based on Apocryphal sources, dating from about 400. The legend contained in these writings (whose ecclesiastical use was forbidden by Gelasius I.) was accepted as true by the pseudc-Dionysius and by Gregory of Tours, the latter of whom gives it in the following form. All the apostles were assembled in the house of Mary to watch by her death-bed, when Jesus appeared with his angels, received her soul, and gave it over to the archangel Michael. When on the following day they were about to carry her body to the grave he appeared again and took it up in a cloud to paradise, there to be reunited with the soul. The legend
appears in a more extended form in John of Damascus; not only the angels but the patriarchs stand around the death-bed with the apostles, and even Adam and Eve are there, calling their descendant blessed for removing the curse which through them came into the world (see Assumption, Feast op the). The feast of the Presentation, attested in the ninth century by the homilies of George of Nicomedia, was ordained in the twelfth for the whole Eastern Empire by Manuel Comnenus. In 1372, at the request of King Charles IV., it was sanctioned by Gregory XL for France, and fixed on Nov. 21. It commemorates, following the Apocryphal gospels the presentation of Mary in the Temple at the age of three, in pursuance of a vow of her parents. The Visitation, found only in the Western Church, commemorates the visit of Mary to Elisabeth, and is first found in the list of festivals drawn up by the Synod of Mans in 1247. After the Franciscans had adopted it as a feast of the order in the general chapter at Pisa in 1263, Urban VI. extended it to the whole of Christendom in 1389. The feast of the Espousal of Mary with Joseph has apparently been celebrated on Feb. 23 since the fourteenth century. It was extended to the whole of Christendom by Benedict XIII. in 1725. The Seven Dolors are celebrated on the Friday before Palm Sunday. These are variously enumerated as beginning either with the prophecy of Simeon and the flight into Egypt, or with the parting between Jesus and his mother at the commencement of the Passion, ending in both cases with the crucifixion and burial. Among the numerous hymns written for this festival from the thirteenth century, in which it seems to have originated in the Servite order, the most famous is the Stabat Mater of the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi (q.v.). The feast of the Joys of Mary (Sept. 24) is a parallel commemoration suggested by the " joyful mysteries " of the rosary. The festival of St. Mary of the Snows is a local Roman feast celebrated on Aug. 5 in memory of the foundation of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. The legend relates that the patrician John and his wife were directed by a vision to build the church in a certain spot on the Esquiline, designated by a miraculous fall of snow in mid-summer. Other festivals, such as the Expectation of Mary (Dec. 18), the Holy Name of Mary (Sunday after her Nativity), Our Lady of Mt. Carmel or of the Scapular (July 16), Our Lady of Ransom (Sept. 24), the Patronage of Our Lady (third Sunday in November), are of minor importance. The feast of the Immaculate Conception, which has assumed great importance since the Reformation, is purely western (see Immaculate Conception).
IV. Devotion to Mary since the Reformation: The Reformation churches returned in this regard to the standpoint of primitive Christianity. While Luther in 1516 was still so much under the influence
of the Scotist tradition as to call Mary
i. In (with a play on one interpretation of
Protestant her name) " the only pure drop in the
Churches, ocean of human perdition," in 1521,
in his exposition of the Magnificat, he dwelt on the humility of this handmaiden of God, " who is no helping goddess, who gives us nothing,
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ
in whom rather God as the only giver of all things is to be praised." The fact that he held to the traditional belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary did not lessen his decided opposition to the practise of asking for her intercession. The same position was taken by the other principal leaders of the German Reformation.
In the Roman Catholic countries, however, devotion to Mary received scarcely even a temporary check. The Jesuit order put a new enthusiasm into this as into all other medieval institutions; and the same tendency was furthered by the foundation of a number of female religious orders 2. Growth bearing her name or specially devoted of Roman to her during the sixteenth and seven- Catholic teenth centuries. A certain reaction Devotion, against this attitude was the result of the freer spirit of Jansenism and similar movements, and of literary undertakings after the middle of the seventeenth century, such as those of Theophile Raynaud (Diptycha Mariana, Grenoble, 1643), J. de Launoy (1676), and A. Baillet (1693). This opposition was carried still further by the reform movement of the Emperor Joseph. By his orders in 1784, the gold and silver hearts, hands and feet, and other votive offerings were removed from the shrines of Mary and from the churches, and the further distribution of scapulars, medals, and amulets forbidden. After the Congress of Ems (q.v.) and the Synod of Pistoja in 1786, however, Pius VI. defeated the anti-ultramontane opposition, and brought to nothing the hopes of those who had looked for thorough and permanent expulsion of the Jesuit spirit from the Church. Especially in Southern Italy, a more exaggerated devotion than ever surpassed the most extreme assertions of medieval theologians. In the Glorie di Maria of Liguori (q.v.), which found a wide circulation outside of Italy, Mary's mediatorial power was celebrated as even greater than that of her Son. All this prepared the way for the complete triumph of the upholders of the Immaculate Conception theory in the decree of Pius IX. in 1854 (see Immaculate Conception). The increasing enthusiasm of the Roman Catholics in devotion to Mary was not, however, so strongly promoted by this decision on a technical point as by other factors, especially the institution of the Feast of the Rosary, on the first Sunday in October (a Dominican institution, extended to the whole Church by Gregory XIII. in 1583), and the introduction by the Jesuits of the May Devotions, by which the entire month of May acquired the character of a season consecrated to the special honor of the Virgin. These latter arose at the end of the eighteenth century in Italy as an ecclesiastical antithesis to the irreligious spring festivals introduced by the French Revolution, and gradually spread to France, Belgium, Austria and Germany. Pius VII. commended the custom by a brief of Mar. 21, 1815, and attached numerous indulgences to it. A further help to the promotion of Marian devotion has been found in the sodalities or congregations of the blessed Virgin, originating in the sixteenth century but flourishing especially in the later epoch of Jesuit influence (see Confraternities, Religious).
It is impossible to enumerate the pilgrimageplaces which serve as local centers of the cult, on account of miraculous pictures or relics. Every century since the beginning of the Middle Ages has seen new places of this sort arise; and 3. Pil- the nineteenth has not been behind the grimage- others. France has had La Salette Places. (1846) and Lourdes (1851), Italy New Pompeii (1880), and Germany Marpingen near Treves (1876) and Dietrichswalde in Eastern Prussia (1877). As long ago as 1672, Gumppenberg's Atlas Marianus could describe more than twelve hundred miraculous pictures or images, of which about half were in Germany. Many of these, of course, have long since fallen into decay; but others, especially the newer ones, retain their attraction in spite of all criticism. The miraculous picture of the Madonna di Pompeji, originally bought from an antiquary for four francs, now reposes on a throne valued at one hundred and fifty thousand francs; the image was solemnly crowned by Cardinal Valletta in 1887 before a throng of devotees numbering many thousands. In Russian Poland the miraculous Madonna of Czenstochau is venerated as " Queen of Poland " and protectress of the Polish race. In France the famous miraculous spring at Lourdes (q.v.), designated to the fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous by a vision on Feb. 11, 1858, attracts thousands of pilgrims every year, and the cures wrought there have been so remarkable as to engage the serious attention of men of science. Among the more ancient which have preserved their fame undiminished through centuries, mention should be made of those of Assisi (the Portiuncula) and Loreto (q.v.) in central Italy, of Maria Einsiedeln and Maria Stein in Switzerland, of Monserrat del Pilar and Guadalupe in Spain, of Hall in Belgium, and in Germany of Kevelaer, with its miraculous picture much visited since 1642, and Aachen, where for nearly a thousand years the alleged garment of the Virgin and swaddling-clothes of the infant Jesus have been preserved and occasionally exhibited.
V. The Glorification of Mary in Art: The date of the earliest artistic representations of the Virgin has been a subject of controversy between Roman Catholic and Protestant writers. The latter usually ascribe to the period of the Theotokos 1. Early controversy, the fifth century, those Stages. which may properly be called Madonna-pictures, while the former date them earlier than the Nestorian heresy, some even tracing their origin to the sub-apostolic age. The true solution of this difference of opinion is probably found in the view that the pre-Nestorian period produced a number of pictures in which Mary appeared as part of a group, but that the origin of separate pictures of her intended to be used as objects of religious veneration can not be placed so early. In the oldest Christian works of art, Mary appears invariably as a member of the composition —connected, that is, with scenes from the life of Jesus, especially the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, or the Presentation in the Temple. The oldest representations of the Annunciation, including the famous one from the catacomb of Priscilla