(E. Bn.)
MARY1(Μαρία, Μαριάμ), the mother of Jesus. At the time when the gospel history begins, she had her home in Galilee, at the village of Nazareth. Of her parentage nothing is recorded in any extant historical document of the 1st century, for the genealogy in Luke iii. (cf. i. 27) is manifestly that of Joseph. In early life she became the wife of Joseph (q.v.) and the mother of Jesus Christ; that she afterwards had other children is a natural inference from Matt. i. 25, which the evangelists, who frequently allude to “the brethren of the Lord,” are at no pains to obviate. The few incidents mentioned in Scripture regarding her show that she followed our Lord to the very close of His earthly career with unfailing motherliness, but the “Magnificat” assigned to her in Luke i. is the only passage which would distinctly imply on her part a high prophetic appreciation of His divine mission. It is however doubtful whether Luke really intended to assign this hymn to Mary or to Elizabeth (cf. especiallyNiceta of Remesianaby A. E. Burn, Cambridge, 1905; Harnack’s “Das Magnificat der Elizabeth” in theSitzungsberichteof the Berlin Academy for 1900, and Burkitt’s “Who spoke the Magnificat?” in theJournal of Theological Studies, Jan. 1906). The original text of Luke probably mentioned no name in introducing the Magnificat; scribes supplied the ambiguity by inserting, some Mary, others Elizabeth. It is doubtful which represents the intention of the writer: there is perhaps more to be said for the view that he meant to assign the Magnificat to Elizabeth. Mary was present at the Crucifixion, where she was commended by Jesus to the care of the apostle John (John xix. 26, 27), Joseph having apparently died before this time. Mary is mentioned in Acts i. 14 as having been among those who continued in prayer along with the apostles at Jerusalem during the interval between the Ascension and Pentecost. There is no allusion in the New Testament to the time or place of her death.
The subsequent growth of ecclesiastical tradition and belief regarding Mary will be traced must conveniently under the separate heads of (1) her perpetual virginity, (2) her absolute sinlessness, (3) her peculiar relation to the Godhead, which specially fits her for successful intercession on behalf of mankind.
Her Perpetual Virginity.—This doctrine was, to say the least, of no importance in the eyes of the evangelists, and so far as extant writings go there is no evidence of its having been anywhere taught within the pale of the Catholic Church of the first three centuries. On the contrary, to Tertullian the fact ofMary’s marriage after the birth of Christ is a useful argument for the reality of the Incarnation against gnostic notions, and Origen relies upon the references to the Lord’s brethren as disproving the Docetism with which he had to contend. Theἀειπαρθενίαthough very ancient, is in reality a doctrine of non-Catholic origin, and first occurs in a work proscribed by the earliest papalIndex librorum prohibitorum(attributed to Gelasius) as heretical,—the so-calledProtevangelium Jacobi, written, it is generally admitted, within the 2nd century. According to this very early source, which seems to have formed the basis of the laterLiber de infantia Mariae et Christi salvatorisandEvangelium de nativitate Mariae, the name of Mary’s father was Joachim (in theLiber de infantiaa shepherd of the tribe of Judah, living in Jerusalem); he had long been married to Anna her mother, whose continual childlessness had become a cause of much humiliation and sorrow to them both. The birth of a daughter was at last angelically predicted to each parent separately. From her third to her twelfth year “Mary was in the Temple as if she were a dove that dwelt there, and she received food from the hand of an angel.” When she became of nubile age a guardian was sought for her by the priests among the widowers of Israel “lest she should defile the sanctuary of the Lord”; and Joseph, an elderly man with a family, was indicated for this charge by a miraculous token. Some time afterwards the annunciation took place; when the Virgin’s pregnancy was discovered, Joseph and she were brought before the high priest, and, though asserting their innocence in all sincerity, were acquitted only after they had been tried with “the water of the ordeal of the Lord” (Num. v. 11). Numerous details regarding the birth at Bethlehem are then given. The perpetual physical virginity of Mary, naïvely insisted upon in this apocryphon, is alluded to only with a half belief and a “some say” by Clement of Alexandria (Strom.vii. 16), but became of much importance to the leaders of the Church in the 4th century, as for example to Ambrose, who sees in Ezek. xliv. 1-3 a prophetic indication of so great a mystery.2Those who continued to believe that Mary, after the miraculous birth of Jesus, had become the mother of other children by Joseph came accordingly to be spoken of as her enemies—Antidicomarianitae (Epiphanius) or Antidicomaritae (Augustine)—and the first-mentioned author devotes a whole chapter (ch. 78) of his great work upon heresies to their confutation. For holding the same view Bonosus of Sardica was condemned by the synod of Capua in 391. To Jerome the perpetual virginity not only of Mary but even of Joseph appeared of so much consequence that while a young man he wrote (387) the long and vehement tractAgainst Helvidius, in which he was the first to broach the theory (which has since gained wide currency) that the brethren of our Lord were children neither of Mary by her husband nor of Joseph by a former marriage, but of another Mary, sister to the Virgin and wife of Clopas or Alphaeus. At last the epithet ofἀεὶ παρθένοςwas authoritatively applied to the Virgin by the council of Chalcedon in 451, and the doctrine implied has ever since been an undisputed point of orthodoxy both in the Eastern and in the Roman Churches, some even seeking to hold the Anglican Church committed to it on account of the general declaration (in theHomilies) of concurrence in the decisions of the first four general councils.
Her Absolute Sinlessness.—While much of the apocryphal literature of the early sects in which she is repeatedly spoken of as “undefiled before God” would seem to encourage some such doctrine as this, many passages from the acknowledged fathers of the Church could be cited to show that it was originally quite unknown to Catholicism. Even Augustine repeatedly asserts that she was born in original sin (De gen. ad lit.x. 18); and thelocus classicusregarding her possible immunity from actual transgression, on which the subsequent doctrine of Lombardus and his commentators was based, is simply an extremely guarded passage (De nat. et grat.ch. 36), in which, while contradicting the assertion of Pelagius that many had lived free from sin, he wishes exception to be made in favour of “the holy Virgin Mary, of whom out of honour to the Lord I wish no question to be made where sins are treated of—for how do we know what mode of grace wholly to conquer sin may have been bestowed upon her who was found meet to conceive and bear Him of whom it is certain that He had no sin.” A writer so late as Anselm (Cur deus homo, ii. 16), declares that “the Virgin herself whence He (Christ) was assumed was conceived in iniquity, and in sin did her mother conceive her, and with original sin was she born, because she too sinned in Adam in whom all sinned,” and the same view was expressed by Damiani. For the growth of the modern Roman doctrine of the immaculate conception from the time in the 12th century, when the canons of Lyons sought to institute a festival in honour of her “holy conception,” and were remonstrated with by Bernard, seeImmaculate Conception. The epithets applied to her in the Greek Church are such asἀμόλυντος, πάναγνος, ἀγία, παναγία; but in the East generally no clear distinction is drawn between immunity from actual sin and original sinlessness.
Her Peculiar Relation to the Godhead, which specially fits Her for Successful Intercession on Behalf of Mankind.—It seems probable that the epithetθεοτόκος(“Mother of God”) was first applied to Mary by theologians of Alexandria towards the close of the 3rd century; but it does not occur in any genuine extant writing of that period, unless we are to assign an early date to the apocryphalTransitus Mariae, in which the word is of frequent occurrence. In the 4th century it is met with frequently, being used by Eusebius, Athanasius, Didymus and Gregory of Nazianzus,—the latter declaring that the man who believes not Mary to have beenθεοτόκοςhas no part in God (Orat.li. p. 738).3If its use was first recommended by a desire to bring into prominence the divinity of the Incarnate Word, there can be no doubt that latterly the expression came to be valued as directly honourable to Mary herself and as corresponding to the greatly increased esteem in which she personally was held throughout the Catholic world, so that when Nestorius and others began to dispute its propriety, in the following century, their temerity was resented, not as an attack upon the established orthodox doctrine of the Nicene creed, but as threatening a more vulnerable and more tender part of the popular faith. It is sufficient in illustration of the drift of theological opinion to refer to the first sermon of Proclus, preached on a certain festival of the Virgin (πανήγυρις παρθενική) at Constantinople about the year 430 or to that of Cyril of Alexandria delivered in the church of the Virgin Mary at the opening of the council of Ephesus in 431. In the former the orator speaks of “the holy Virgin and Mother of God” as “the spotless treasure-house of virginity, the spiritual paradise of the second Adam; the workshop in which two natures were welded together ... the one bridge between God and men”;4in the latter she is saluted as the “mother and virgin,” “through whom (δι᾽ ἧς) the Trinity is glorified and worshipped, the cross of the Saviour exalted and honoured, through whom heaven triumphs, the angels are made glad, devils driven forth, the tempter overcome, and the fallen creature raised up even to heaven.” The response which such language found in the popular heart was sufficiently shown by the shouts of joy with which the Ephesian mob heard of the deposition of Nestorius, escorting his judges with torches and incense to their homes, and celebrating the occasion by a general illumination. The causes which in the preceding century had led to this exaltation of the Mother of God in the esteem of the Catholic world are not far to seek. On the one hand the solution of the Arian controversy, however correct it may have been theoretically, undoubtedly had the practical effectof relegating the God-man redeemer for ordinary minds into a far away region of “remote and awful Godhead,” so that the need for a mediator to deal with the very Mediator could not fail to be felt. On the other hand, the religious instincts of mankind are very ready to pay worship, in grosser or more refined forms, to the idea of womanhood; at all events many of those who became professing Christians at the political fall of Paganism entered the Church with such instincts (derived from the nature-religions in which they had been brought up) very fully developed. Probably it ought to be added that the comparative colourlessness with which the character of Mary is presented, not only in the canonical gospels but even in the most copious of the apocrypha, left greater scope for the untrammelled exercise of devout imagination than was possible in the case of Christ, in the circumstances of whose humiliation and in whose recorded utterances there were many things which the religious consciousness found difficulty in understanding or in adapting to itself. At all events, from the time of the council of Ephesus, to exhibit figures of the Virgin and Child became the approved expression of orthodoxy, and the relationship of motherhood in which Mary had been formally declared to stand to God5was instinctively felt to give the fullest and freest sanction of the Church to that invocation of her aid which had previously been resorted to only hesitatingly and occasionally. Previously to the council of Ephesus, indeed, the practice had obtained complete recognition, so far as we know, in those circles only in which one or other of the numerous redactions of theTransitus Mariaepassed current.6There we read of Mary’s prayer to Christ: “Do Thou bestow Thine aid upon every man calling upon, or praying to, or naming the name of Thine handmaid”; to which His answer is, “Every soul that calls upon Thy name shall not be ashamed, but shall find mercy and support and confidence both in the world that now is and in that which is to come in the presence of My Father in the heavens.” But Gregory of Nazianzus also, in his panegyric upon Justina, mentions with incidental approval that in her hour of peril she “implored Mary the Virgin to come to the aid of a virgin in her danger.”7Of the growth of the Marian cultus, alike in the East and in the West, after the decision at Ephesus it would be impossible to trace the history, however slightly, within the limits of the present article. Justinian in one of his laws bespeaks her advocacy for the empire, and he inscribes the high altar in the new church of St Sophia with her name. Narses looks to her for directions on the field of battle. The emperor Heraclius bears her image on his banner. John of Damascus speaks of her as the sovereign lady to whom the whole creation has been made subject by her son. Peter Damian recognizes her as the most exalted of all creatures, and apostrophizes her as deified and endowed with all power in heaven and in earth, yet not forgetful of our race.8In a word, popular devotion gradually developed the entire system of doctrine and practice which Protestant controversialists are accustomed to call by the name of Mariolatry. With reference to this much-disputed phrase it is always to be kept in mind that the directly authoritative documents, alike of the Greek and of the Roman Church, distinguish formally betweenlatriaanddulia, and declare that the “worship” to be paid to the mother of God must never exceed that superlative degree ofduliawhich is vaguely described ashyperdulia. But the comparative reserve shown by the council of Trent in its decrees, and even in its catechism,9on this subject has not been observed by individual theologians, and in view of the fact of the canonization of some of these (such as Liguori)—a fact guaranteeing the absence of erroneous teaching from their writings—it does not seem unfair, to hold the Roman Church responsible for the natural interpretations and just inferences which may be drawn even from apparently exaggerated expressions in such works as the well-knownGlories of Maryand others frequently quoted in controversial literature. There is a goodrésuméof Catholic developments of the cultus of Mary in Pusey’sEirenicon.
The following are the principal feasts of the Virgin in the order in which they occur in the ecclesiastical year. (1) That of the Presentation (Praesentatio B. V. M.,τὰ εἰσόδια τῆς θεοτόκου), to commemorate the beginning of her stay in the Temple, as recorded in theProtevangelium Jacobi. It is believed to have originated in the East in the 8th century, the earliest allusion to it being made by George of Nicomedia (9th century); Manuel Comnenus made it universal for the Eastern Empire, and in the modern Greek Church it is one of the five great festivals in honour of the Deipara. It was introduced into the Western Church late in the 14th century, and, after having been withdrawn from the calendar by Pius V., was restored by Sixtus V., the day observed in both East and West being the 21st of November. It is not mentioned in the English calendar. (2) The Feast of the Conception (Conceptio B. V. M.,Conceptio immaculata B. V. M.,σύλληψις τῆς ἁγίας Ἄννης), observed by the Roman Catholic Church on the 8th of December, and by all the Eastern Churches on the 9th of December, has already been explained; in the Greek Church it only ranks as one of the middle festivals of Mary. (3) The Feast of the Purification (Occursus,Obviatio,Praesentatio,Festum SS Simeonis et Annae,Purificatio,Candelaria,ὑπαπαντή,ὑπαντή) is otherwise known asCandlemas. (4) The Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary (Annunciatio,Εὐαγγελισμός). It may be mentioned that at the council of Toledo in 656 it was decreed that this festival should be observed on the 18th of December, in order to keep clear of Lent. (5) The Feast of the Visitation (Visitatio B. V. M.) was instituted by Urban VI., promulgated in 1389 by Boniface IX., and reappointed by the council of Basel in 1441 in commemoration of the visit paid by Mary to Elizabeth. It is observed on the 2nd of July, and has been retained in the English calendar. (6) The Feast of the Assumption (Dormitio,Pausatio,Transitus,Depositio,Migratio,Assumptio,καίμησις,μετάστασις,ἀνάληψις) has reference to the apocryphal story related in several forms in various documents of the 4th century condemned by Pope Gelasius. Their general purport is that as the time drew nigh for “the most blessed Virgin” (who is also spoken of as “Holy Mary,” “the queen of all the saints,” “the holy spotless Mother of God”) to leave the world, the apostles were miraculously assembled round her deathbed at Bethlehem on the Lord’s Day, whereupon Christ descended with a multitude of angels and received her soul. After “the spotless and precious body” had been laid in the tomb, “suddenly there shone round them (the apostles) a miraculous light,” and it was taken up into heaven. The first Catholic writer who relates this story is Gregory of Tours (c.590); Epiphanius two centuries earlier had declared that nothing was known as to the circumstances of Mary’s death and burial; and one of the documents of the council of Ephesus implies a belief that she was buried in that city. The Sleep of the Theotokos is observed in the Greek Church as a great festival on the 15th of August; the Armenian Church also commemorates it, but the Ethiopic Church celebrates her death and burial on two separate days. The earliest allusion to the existence of such a festival inthe Western Church seems to be that found in the proceedings of the synod of Salzburg in 800; it is also spoken of in the thirty-sixth canon of the reforming synod of Mainz, held in 813. It was not at that time universal, being mentioned as doubtful in the capitularies of Charlemagne. The doctrine of the bodily assumption of the Virgin into heaven, although extensively believed, and indeed flowing as a natural theological consequence from that of her sinlessness, has never been declared to be “de fide” by the Church of Rome, and is still merely a “pia sententia.” (7) The Nativity of Mary (Nativitas,γενέθλιον τῆς θεοτόκου) observed on the 8th of September, is first mentioned in one of the homilies of Andrew of Crete (c.750), and with the Feasts of the Purification, the Annunciation and the Assumption, it was appointed to be observed by the synod of Salzburg in 800, but seems to have been unknown at that time in the Gallican Church, and even two centuries later it was by no means general in Italy. In the Roman Catholic Church a large number of minor festivals in honour of the Virgin are locally celebrated; and all the Saturdays of the year as well as the entire month of May are also regarded as sacred to her.The chief apocryphal writings concerned with Mary are the following: (1) ThePortevangelium Jacobi, with its derivatives theDe nativitate Mariae, theEvangelium Ps.-Matthaei, theHistoria Josephi fabri lignarii(all edited by Tischendorf,Evangelia apocrypha; cf. Harnack,Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur, p. 20 seq. andChronologie, i. 598 sqq.). (2)Evangelium Mariae(seeSitzungsberichte der Berlinischen Akademie der Wissenschaften1896, pp. 839-847). (3)Ιωάννου τοῦ θεολόγου λόγος εἰς τὴν κοίμησιν τῆς θεοτόκου, which appears in Latin under the title of theTransitus Mariae(ed. Tischendorf,Apocalypses apocryphaeandEvangelia apocrypha, and see Bonnet,Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theol., 1880, pp. 222-247).
The following are the principal feasts of the Virgin in the order in which they occur in the ecclesiastical year. (1) That of the Presentation (Praesentatio B. V. M.,τὰ εἰσόδια τῆς θεοτόκου), to commemorate the beginning of her stay in the Temple, as recorded in theProtevangelium Jacobi. It is believed to have originated in the East in the 8th century, the earliest allusion to it being made by George of Nicomedia (9th century); Manuel Comnenus made it universal for the Eastern Empire, and in the modern Greek Church it is one of the five great festivals in honour of the Deipara. It was introduced into the Western Church late in the 14th century, and, after having been withdrawn from the calendar by Pius V., was restored by Sixtus V., the day observed in both East and West being the 21st of November. It is not mentioned in the English calendar. (2) The Feast of the Conception (Conceptio B. V. M.,Conceptio immaculata B. V. M.,σύλληψις τῆς ἁγίας Ἄννης), observed by the Roman Catholic Church on the 8th of December, and by all the Eastern Churches on the 9th of December, has already been explained; in the Greek Church it only ranks as one of the middle festivals of Mary. (3) The Feast of the Purification (Occursus,Obviatio,Praesentatio,Festum SS Simeonis et Annae,Purificatio,Candelaria,ὑπαπαντή,ὑπαντή) is otherwise known asCandlemas. (4) The Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary (Annunciatio,Εὐαγγελισμός). It may be mentioned that at the council of Toledo in 656 it was decreed that this festival should be observed on the 18th of December, in order to keep clear of Lent. (5) The Feast of the Visitation (Visitatio B. V. M.) was instituted by Urban VI., promulgated in 1389 by Boniface IX., and reappointed by the council of Basel in 1441 in commemoration of the visit paid by Mary to Elizabeth. It is observed on the 2nd of July, and has been retained in the English calendar. (6) The Feast of the Assumption (Dormitio,Pausatio,Transitus,Depositio,Migratio,Assumptio,καίμησις,μετάστασις,ἀνάληψις) has reference to the apocryphal story related in several forms in various documents of the 4th century condemned by Pope Gelasius. Their general purport is that as the time drew nigh for “the most blessed Virgin” (who is also spoken of as “Holy Mary,” “the queen of all the saints,” “the holy spotless Mother of God”) to leave the world, the apostles were miraculously assembled round her deathbed at Bethlehem on the Lord’s Day, whereupon Christ descended with a multitude of angels and received her soul. After “the spotless and precious body” had been laid in the tomb, “suddenly there shone round them (the apostles) a miraculous light,” and it was taken up into heaven. The first Catholic writer who relates this story is Gregory of Tours (c.590); Epiphanius two centuries earlier had declared that nothing was known as to the circumstances of Mary’s death and burial; and one of the documents of the council of Ephesus implies a belief that she was buried in that city. The Sleep of the Theotokos is observed in the Greek Church as a great festival on the 15th of August; the Armenian Church also commemorates it, but the Ethiopic Church celebrates her death and burial on two separate days. The earliest allusion to the existence of such a festival inthe Western Church seems to be that found in the proceedings of the synod of Salzburg in 800; it is also spoken of in the thirty-sixth canon of the reforming synod of Mainz, held in 813. It was not at that time universal, being mentioned as doubtful in the capitularies of Charlemagne. The doctrine of the bodily assumption of the Virgin into heaven, although extensively believed, and indeed flowing as a natural theological consequence from that of her sinlessness, has never been declared to be “de fide” by the Church of Rome, and is still merely a “pia sententia.” (7) The Nativity of Mary (Nativitas,γενέθλιον τῆς θεοτόκου) observed on the 8th of September, is first mentioned in one of the homilies of Andrew of Crete (c.750), and with the Feasts of the Purification, the Annunciation and the Assumption, it was appointed to be observed by the synod of Salzburg in 800, but seems to have been unknown at that time in the Gallican Church, and even two centuries later it was by no means general in Italy. In the Roman Catholic Church a large number of minor festivals in honour of the Virgin are locally celebrated; and all the Saturdays of the year as well as the entire month of May are also regarded as sacred to her.
The chief apocryphal writings concerned with Mary are the following: (1) ThePortevangelium Jacobi, with its derivatives theDe nativitate Mariae, theEvangelium Ps.-Matthaei, theHistoria Josephi fabri lignarii(all edited by Tischendorf,Evangelia apocrypha; cf. Harnack,Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur, p. 20 seq. andChronologie, i. 598 sqq.). (2)Evangelium Mariae(seeSitzungsberichte der Berlinischen Akademie der Wissenschaften1896, pp. 839-847). (3)Ιωάννου τοῦ θεολόγου λόγος εἰς τὴν κοίμησιν τῆς θεοτόκου, which appears in Latin under the title of theTransitus Mariae(ed. Tischendorf,Apocalypses apocryphaeandEvangelia apocrypha, and see Bonnet,Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theol., 1880, pp. 222-247).
(J. S. Bl.; K. L.)
1The name (Heb.מרים), that of the sister of Moses and Aaron, is of uncertain etymology; many interpretations have been suggested, includingStella maris(“star of the sea”), which, though it has attained considerable currency through Jerome (theOnomasticon), may be at once dismissed. It seems to have been very common among the Jews in New Testament times: besides the subject of the present notice there are mentioned (1) “Mary (the wife) of Clopas,” who was perhaps the mother of James “the little” (ὁ μικρός) and of Joses; (2) Mary Magdalene,i.e.of Magdala; (3) Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus; (4) Mary, the mother of Mark; and (5) Mary, an otherwise unknown benefactress of the apostle Paul (Rom. xvi. 6).2De Inst. Virg., “quæ est hæc porta nisi Maria? ... per quam Christus intravit in hunc mundum, quando virginali fusus est partu et genitalia virginitatis claustra non solvit.”3See Gieseler (KG., Bd. i. Abth. 1), who points out instances in which anti-Arianizing zeal went so far as to call Davidθεοπάτωρand Jamesάδελφόθεος.4Labbé,Conc.iii. 51. Considerable extracts are given by Augusti (Denkw.iii.); see also Milman (Lat. Christ.i. 185), who characterizes much of it as a “wild labyrinth of untranslatable metaphor.”5The termθεοτόκαςdoes not actually occur in the canons of Ephesus. It is found, however, in the creed of Chalcedon.6It is true that Irenaeus (Haer.v. 19, 1) in the passage in which he draws his well-known parallel and contrast between the first and second Eve (cf. Justin,Dial. c. Tryph.100), to the effect that “as the human race fell into bondage to death by a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin,” takes occasion to speak of Mary as the “advocata” of Eve; but it seems certain that this word is a translation of the Greekσυνήγορος, and implies hostility and rebuke rather than advocacy.7It is probable that the commemorations and invocations of the Virgin which occur in the present texts of the ancient liturgies of “St James” and “St Mark” are due to interpolation. In this connexion ought also to be noted the chapter in Epiphanius (Haer., 79) against the “Collyridians,” certain women in Thrace, Scythia and Arabia, who were in the habit of worshipping the Virgin (ἀεὶ παρθένον) as a goddess, the offering of a cake (καλλυρίδα τινα) being one of the features of their worship. He rebukes them for offering the worship which was due to the Trinity alone; “let Mary be held in honour, but by no means worshipped.” The cultus was probably a relic of heathenism; cf. Jer. xliv. 19.8“Numquid quia ita deificata, ideo nostrae humanitatis oblita es? Nequaquam, Domina.... Data est tibi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra. Nil tibi impossibile.”Serm. de nativ. Mariae, ap. Gieseler,KG., Bd. ii. Abth. 1.9The points taught in the catechism are—that she is truly the Mother of God, and the second Eve, by whose means we have received blessing and life; that she is the Mother of Pity, and very specially our advocate; that her merits are highly exalted, and that her dispositions towards us are extremely gracious; that her images are of the utmost utility. In theMissalher intercessions (though alluded to in the canon and elsewhere) are seldom directly appealed to except in the Litany and in some of the later offices, such as those for the 8th of September and for the Festival of the Seven Sorrows (decree by Benedict XIII. in 1727). Noteworthy are the versicles in the office for the 8th of December (The Feast of the Immaculate Conception), “Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te,” and “Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, Maria, quia fecit tibi magna qui potens est.”
1The name (Heb.מרים), that of the sister of Moses and Aaron, is of uncertain etymology; many interpretations have been suggested, includingStella maris(“star of the sea”), which, though it has attained considerable currency through Jerome (theOnomasticon), may be at once dismissed. It seems to have been very common among the Jews in New Testament times: besides the subject of the present notice there are mentioned (1) “Mary (the wife) of Clopas,” who was perhaps the mother of James “the little” (ὁ μικρός) and of Joses; (2) Mary Magdalene,i.e.of Magdala; (3) Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus; (4) Mary, the mother of Mark; and (5) Mary, an otherwise unknown benefactress of the apostle Paul (Rom. xvi. 6).
2De Inst. Virg., “quæ est hæc porta nisi Maria? ... per quam Christus intravit in hunc mundum, quando virginali fusus est partu et genitalia virginitatis claustra non solvit.”
3See Gieseler (KG., Bd. i. Abth. 1), who points out instances in which anti-Arianizing zeal went so far as to call Davidθεοπάτωρand Jamesάδελφόθεος.
4Labbé,Conc.iii. 51. Considerable extracts are given by Augusti (Denkw.iii.); see also Milman (Lat. Christ.i. 185), who characterizes much of it as a “wild labyrinth of untranslatable metaphor.”
5The termθεοτόκαςdoes not actually occur in the canons of Ephesus. It is found, however, in the creed of Chalcedon.
6It is true that Irenaeus (Haer.v. 19, 1) in the passage in which he draws his well-known parallel and contrast between the first and second Eve (cf. Justin,Dial. c. Tryph.100), to the effect that “as the human race fell into bondage to death by a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin,” takes occasion to speak of Mary as the “advocata” of Eve; but it seems certain that this word is a translation of the Greekσυνήγορος, and implies hostility and rebuke rather than advocacy.
7It is probable that the commemorations and invocations of the Virgin which occur in the present texts of the ancient liturgies of “St James” and “St Mark” are due to interpolation. In this connexion ought also to be noted the chapter in Epiphanius (Haer., 79) against the “Collyridians,” certain women in Thrace, Scythia and Arabia, who were in the habit of worshipping the Virgin (ἀεὶ παρθένον) as a goddess, the offering of a cake (καλλυρίδα τινα) being one of the features of their worship. He rebukes them for offering the worship which was due to the Trinity alone; “let Mary be held in honour, but by no means worshipped.” The cultus was probably a relic of heathenism; cf. Jer. xliv. 19.
8“Numquid quia ita deificata, ideo nostrae humanitatis oblita es? Nequaquam, Domina.... Data est tibi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra. Nil tibi impossibile.”Serm. de nativ. Mariae, ap. Gieseler,KG., Bd. ii. Abth. 1.
9The points taught in the catechism are—that she is truly the Mother of God, and the second Eve, by whose means we have received blessing and life; that she is the Mother of Pity, and very specially our advocate; that her merits are highly exalted, and that her dispositions towards us are extremely gracious; that her images are of the utmost utility. In theMissalher intercessions (though alluded to in the canon and elsewhere) are seldom directly appealed to except in the Litany and in some of the later offices, such as those for the 8th of September and for the Festival of the Seven Sorrows (decree by Benedict XIII. in 1727). Noteworthy are the versicles in the office for the 8th of December (The Feast of the Immaculate Conception), “Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te,” and “Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, Maria, quia fecit tibi magna qui potens est.”
MARY,known asMary Magdalene, a woman mentioned in the Gospels, first in Luke viii. 2, as one of a company who “healed of evil spirits and infirmities ... ministered unto them (Jesus and the apostles) of their substance.” It is said that seven demons were cast out of her, but this need not imply simply one occasion. Her name implies that she came from Magdala (el-Mejdel, 3 m. N.W. from Tiberias: in Matt.xv.39 the right reading is not Magdala by Magadan). She went with Jesus on the last journey to Jerusalem, witnessed the Crucifixion, followed to the burial, and returned to prepare spices. Johnxx.gives an account of her finding the tomb empty and of her interview with the risen Jesus. Mary of Magdala has been confounded (1) with the unnamed fallen woman who in Simon’s house anointed Christ’s feet (Luke vii. 37); (2) with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus and Martha.
MARY I.,queen of England (1516-1558), unpleasantly remembered as “the Bloody Mary” on account of the religious persecutions which prevailed during her reign, was the daughter of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon, born in the earlier years of their married life, when as yet no cloud had darkened the prospect of Henry’s reign. Her birth occurred at Greenwich, on Monday, the 18th February 1516, and she was baptized on the following Wednesday, Cardinal Wolsey standing as her godfather. She seems to have been a singularly precocious child, and is reported in July 1520, when scarcely four and a half years old, as entertaining some visitors by a performance on the virginals. When she was little over nine she was addressed in a complimentary Latin oration by commissioners sent over from Flanders on commercial matters, and replied to them in the same language “with as much assurance and facility as if she had been twelve years old” (Gayangos, iii. pt. 1, 82). Her father was proud of her achievements. About the same time that she replied to the commissioners in Latin he was arranging that she should learn Spanish, Italian and French. A great part, however, of the credit of her early education was undoubtedly due to her mother, who not only consulted the Spanish scholar Vives upon the subject, but was herself Mary’s first teacher in Latin. She was also well instructed in music, and among her principal recreations as she grew up was that of playing on the virginals and lute.
It was a misfortune that she shared with high-born ladies generally in those days that her prospects in life were made a matter of sordid bargaining from the first. Mary was little more than two years old when she was proposed in marriage to the dauphin, son of Francis I. Three years afterwards the French alliance was broken off, and in 1522 she was affianced to her cousin the young emperor Charles V. by the Treaty of Windsor. No one, perhaps, seriously expected either of these arrangements to endure; and, though we read in grave state papers of some curious compliments and love tokens (really the mere counters of diplomacy) professedly sent by the girl of nine to her powerful cousin, not many years passed away before Charles released himself from this engagement and made a more convenient match. In 1526 a rearrangement was made of the royal household, and it was thought right to give Mary an establishment of her own along with a council on the borders of Wales, for the better government of the Marches. For some years she accordingly kept her court at Ludlow, while new arrangements were made for the disposal of her hand. She was now proposed as a wife, not for the dauphin as before, but for his father Francis I., who had just been redeemed from captivity at Madrid, and who was only too glad of an alliance with England to mitigate the severe conditions imposed on him by the emperor. Wolsey, however, on this occasion, only made use of the princess as a bait to enhance the terms of the compact, and left Francis free in the end to marry the emperor’s sister.
It was during this negotiation, as Henry afterwards pretended, that the question was first raised whether Henry’s own marriage with Catherine was a lawful one. Grammont, bishop of Tarbes, who was one of the ambassadors sent over by Francis to ask the princess in marriage, had, it was said, started an objection that she might possibly be considered illegitimate on account of her mother having been once the wife of her father’s brother. The statement was a mere pretence to shield the king when the unpopularity of the divorce became apparent. It is proved to be untrue by the strongest evidence, for we have pretty full contemporary records of the whole negotiation. On the contrary, it is quite clear that Henry, who had already for some time conceived the project of a divorce, kept the matter a dead secret, and was particularly anxious that the French ambassadors should not know it, while he used his daughter’s hand as a bait for a new alliance. The alliance itself, however, was actually concluded by a treaty dated Westminster, the 30th of April 1527, in which it was provided, as regards the Princess Mary, that she should be married either to Francis himself or to his second son Henry duke of Orleans. But the real object was only to lay the foundation of a perfect mutual understanding between the two kings, which Wolsey soon after went into France to confirm.
During the next nine years the life of Mary, as well as that of her mother, was rendered miserable by the conduct of Henry VIII. in seeking a divorce. During most of that period mother and daughter seem to have been kept apart. Possibly Queen Catherine had the harder trial; but Mary’s was scarcely less severe. Removed from court and treated as a bastard, she was, on the birth of Anne Boleyn’s daughter, required to give up the dignity of princess and acknowledge the illegitimacy of her own birth. On her refusal her household was broken up, and she was sent to Hatfield to act as lady-in-waiting to her own infant half-sister. Nor was even this the worst of her trials; her very life was in danger from the hatred of Anne Boleyn. Her health, moreover, was indifferent, and even when she was seriously ill, although Henry sent his own physician, Dr Buttes, to attend her, he declined to let her mother visit her. So also at her mother’s death, in January 1536, she was forbidden to take a last farewell of her. But in May following another change occurred. Anne Boleyn, the real cause of all her miseries, fell under the king’s displeasure and was put to death. Mary was then urged to make a humble submission to her father as the means of recovering his favour, and after a good deal of correspondence with the king’s secretary, Cromwell, she actually did so. The terms exacted of her were bitter in the extreme, but there was no chance of making life tolerable otherwise, if indeed she was permitted to live at all; and the poor friendless girl, absolutely at the mercy of a father who could brook no contradiction, at length subscribed an act of submission, acknowledging the king as “Supreme Head of the Church of England under Christ,” repudiating the pope’sauthority, and confessing that the marriage between her father and mother “was by God’s law and man’s law incestuous and unlawful.”
No act, perhaps, in the whole of Henry’s reign gives us a more painful idea of his revolting despotism. Mary was a high-spirited girl, and undoubtedly popular. All Europe looked upon her at that time as the only legitimate child of her father, but her father himself compelled her to disown the title and pass an unjust stigma on her own birth and her mother’s good name. Nevertheless Henry was now reconciled to her, and gave her a household in some degree suitable to her rank. During the rest of the reign we hear little about her except in connexion with a number of new marriage projects taken up and abandoned successively, one of which, to the count palatine Philip, duke of Bavaria, was specially repugnant to her in the matter of religion. Her privy purse expenses for nearly the whole of this period have been published, and show that Hatfield, Beaulieu or Newhall in Essex, Richmond and Hunsdon were among her principal places of residence. Although she was still treated as of illegitimate birth, it was believed that the king, having obtained from parliament the extraordinary power to dispose of the crown by will, would restore her to her place in the succession, and three years before his death she was so restored by statute, but still under conditions to be regulated by her father’s will.
Under the reign of her brother, Edward VI. she was again subjected to severe trials, which at one time made her seriously meditate taking flight and escaping abroad. Edward himself indeed seems to have been personally not unkind to her, but the religious revolution in his reign assumed proportions such as it had not done before, and Mary, who had done sufficient violence to her own convictions in submitting to a despotic father, was not disposed to yield an equally tame obedience to authority exercised by a factious council in the name of a younger brother not yet come to years of discretion. Besides, the cause of the pope was naturally her own. In spite of the forced declaration formerly wrung from herself, no one really regarded her as a bastard, and the full recognition of her rights depended on the recognition of the pope as head of the Church. Hence, when Edward’s parliament passed an Act of Uniformity enjoining services in English and communion in both kinds, the law appeared to her totally void of authority, and she insisted on having Mass in her own private chapel under the old form. When ordered to desist, she appealed for protection to the emperor Charles V., who, being her cousin, intervened for some time not ineffectually, threatening war with England if her religious liberty was interfered with. But Edward’s court was composed of factions of which the most violent eventually carried the day. Lord Seymour, the admiral, was attainted of treason and beheaded in 1549. His brother, the Protector Somerset, met with the same fate in 1552. Dudley, duke of Northumberland, then became paramount in the privy council, and easily obtained the sanction of the young king to those schemes for altering the succession which led immediately after his death to the usurpation of Lady Jane Grey. Dudley had, in fact, overawed all the rest of the privy council, and when the event occurred he took such energetic measures to give effect to the scheme that Lady Jane was actually recognized as queen for some days, and Mary had even to fly from Hunsdon into Norfolk. But the country was really devoted to her cause, as indeed her right in law was unquestionable, and before many days she was royally received in London, and took up her abode within the Tower.
Her first acts at the beginning of her reign displayed a character very different from that which she still holds in popular estimation. Her clemency towards those who had taken up arms against her was altogether remarkable. She released from prison Lady Jane’s father, Suffolk, and had difficulty even in signing the warrant for the execution of Northumberland. Lady Jane herself she fully meant to spare, and did spare till after Wyatt’s formidable insurrection. Her conduct, indeed, was in every respect conciliatory and pacific, and so far as they depended on her personal character the prospects of the new reign might have appeared altogether favourable. But unfortunately her position was one of peculiar difficulty, and the policy on which she determined was far from judicious. Inexperienced in the art of governing, she had no trusty councillor but Gardiner; every other member of the council had been more or less implicated in the conspiracy against her. And though she valued Gardiner’s advice she was naturally led to rely even more on that of her cousin, the emperor, who had been her mother’s friend in adversity, and had done such material service to herself in the preceding reign. Following the emperor’s guidance she determined almost from the first to make his son Philip her husband, though she was eleven years his senior. She was also strongly desirous of restoring the old religion and wiping out the stigma of illegitimacy upon her birth, so that she might not seem to reign by virtue of a mere parliamentary settlement.
Each of these different objects was attended by difficulties or objections peculiar to itself; but the marriage was the most unpopular of all. A restoration of the old religion threatened to deprive the new owners of abbey lands of their easy and comfortable acquisitions; and it was only with an express reservation of their interests that the thing was actually accomplished. A declaration of her own legitimacy necessarily cast a slur on that of her sister Elizabeth, and cut her off from the succession. But the marriage promised to throw England into the arms of Spain and place the resources of the kingdom at the command of the emperor’s son. The Commons sent her a deputation to entreat that she would not marry a foreigner, and when her resolution was known insurrections broke out in different parts of the country. Suffolk, whose first rebellion had been pardoned, proclaimed Lady Jane Grey again in Leicestershire, while young Wyatt raised the county of Kent and, though denied access by London Bridge, led his men round by Kingston to the very gates of London before he was repulsed. In the midst of the danger Mary showed great intrepidity, and the rebellion was presently quelled; after which, unhappily, she got leave to pursue her own course unchecked. She married Philip, restored the old religion, and got Cardinal Pole to come over and absolve the kingdom from its past disobedience to the Holy See.
It was a more than questionable policy thus to ally England with Spain—a power then actually at war with France. By the treaty, indeed, England was to remain neutral; but the force of events, in the end, compelled her, as might have been expected, to take part in the quarrel. Meanwhile the country was full of faction, and seditious pamphlets of Protestant origin inflamed the people with hatred against the Spaniards. Philip’s Spanish followers met with positive ill-usage everywhere, and violent outbreaks occurred. A year after his marriage Philip went over to Brussels to receive from his father the government of the Low Countries and afterwards the kingdom of Spain. Much to Mary’s distress, his absence was prolonged for a year and a half, and when he returned in March 1557 it was only to commit England completely to the war; after which he went back to Brussels in July, to return no more to England.
Hostilities with France were inevitable, because France had encouraged disaffection among Mary’s subjects, even during the brief truce of Vaucelles. Conspiracies had been hatched by English refugees in Paris, and an attempt to seize Scarborough had been made with the aid of vessels from the Seine. But perhaps the strangest thing about the situation was that the pope took part with France against Spain; and so the very marriage which Mary had contracted to bring England back to the Holy See made her the wife of the pope’s enemy. It was, moreover, this war with France that occasioned the final calamity of the loss of Calais, which sank so deeply into Mary’s heart some time before she died.
The cruel persecution of the Protestants, which has cast so much infamy upon her reign, was not due, as commonly supposed, to inhumanity on her part. When the kingdom was reconciled to Rome and absolved by Cardinal Pole, itfollowed, almost as a matter of necessity, that the old heresy laws should be revived, as they were then by Act of Parliament. They had been abolished by the Protector Somerset for the express purpose of promoting changes of doctrine which did violence to what was still the prevailing religious sentiment; and now the old religion required to be protected from insult and fanatical outrages. Doubts were felt as to the result even from the first; but the law having been once passed could not be relaxed merely because the victims were so numerous; for that would only have encouraged the irreverence which it was intended to check. No doubt there were milder men among the heretics, but as a class their stern fanaticism and ill-will to the old religion made them dangerous, even to the public peace. Rogers, the first of the martyrs, was burnt on the 4th of February 1555. Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, had been condemned six days before, and suffered the same fate upon the 9th. From this time the persecution went on uninterrupted for three years and three quarters, numbering among its victims Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer. It came to an end at last on the death of Mary. It seems to have been more severe in the eastern and southern parts of England, and the largest number of sufferers was naturally in the diocese of Bonner, bishop of London. From first to last nearly three hundred victims are known to have perished at the stake; and their fate certainly created a revulsion against Rome that nothing else was likely to have effected.
Mary was of weak constitution and subject to frequent illnesses, both before and after her accession. One special infirmity caused her to believe a few months after her marriage that she was with child, and thanksgiving services were ordered throughout the diocese of London in November 1554. The same delusion recurred in March 1558, when though she did not make her expectation public, she drew up a will in anticipation of the dangers of childbirth, constituting her husband regent during the minority of her prospective heir. To this she added a codicil on the 28th of October following, when the illness that was to be her last had set in, showing that she had ceased to have much expectation of maternity, and earnestly entreating her “next heir and successor by the laws” (whom she did not name) to allow execution of the instrument. She died on the 17th of November.
Her name deserved better treatment than it has generally met with; for she was far from cruel. Her kindness to poor people is undoubted, and the severe execution of her laws seemed only a necessity. Even in this matter, moreover, she was alive to the injustice with which the law was usually strained in behalf of the prerogative; and in appointing Sir Richard Morgan chief justice of the Common Pleas she charged him “not to sit in judgment otherwise for her highness than for her subjects,” and to avoid the old error of refusing to admit witnesses against the Crown (Holinshed III. 1112). Her conduct as queen was certainly governed by the best possible intentions; and it is evident that her very zeal for goodness caused most of the trouble she brought upon herself. Her subjects were entirely released, even by papal authority, from any obligation to restore the confiscated lands of the Church. But she herself made it an object, at her own expense, to restore several of the monasteries; and courtiers who did not like to follow her example, encouraged the fanatics to spread an alarm that it would even yet be made compulsory. So the worldly minded joined hands with the godly heretics in stirring up enmity against her.
(J. Ga.)
MARY II.(1662-1694), queen of England and wife of king William III., elder daughter of James, duke of York, afterwards King James II., by his first wife, Anne, daughter of Edward Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon, was born in London on the 30th of April 1662. She was educated as a Protestant, and as it was probable that she would succeed to the English throne after the deaths of her uncle, Charles II., and her father, the choice of a husband for her was a political event of high importance. About 1672 the name of William, prince of Orange, was mentioned in this connexion; and after some hesitation on both sides caused by the condition of European politics, the betrothal of William and Mary took place in October 1677, and was quickly followed by their marriage in London on the 4th of November. Mary’s married life in Holland does not appear to have been a happy one. Although she soon became popular among the Dutch, she remained childless, while William treated her with neglect and even with insult; and her troubles were not diminished after her father became king of England in 1685. James had treated his daughter very shabbily in money matters; and it was increasingly difficult for her to remain loyal to both father and husband when they were so divergent in character and policy. Although Mary never entirely lost her affection for her father the wife prevailed over the daughter; and after the birth of her half-brother, the prince of Wales, in 1688, she regarded the dethronement of James as inevitable. It cannot be said, however, that William merited this confidence. Possibly he was jealous of his wife as the heiress of the English throne, contrasting her future position with his own; but according to Burnet, who was then staying at the Hague, this cause of difference was removed by the tactful interference of Burnet himself. The latter asserts that having divined the reason of the prince’s jealousy he mentioned the matter to the princess, who in her ignorance of statecraft had never considered the relative positions of herself and her husband with regard to the English throne; and that Mary, by telling the prince “she would be no more but his wife, and that she would do all that lay in her power to make him king for life” (Burnet,Supplement, ed. Foxcroft, p. 309), probably mollified her husband’s jealousy. On the other hand Macaulay’s statement that henceforward there was “entire friendship and confidence” between them must be taken with some reserve. Mary shared heartily in the events which immediately preceded William’s expedition to England in 1688. After the success of the undertaking she arrived in London in February 1689; and by her faithful adherence to her promise made a satisfactory settlement of the English crown possible. William and Mary were together proclaimed king and queen of England, and afterwards of Scotland, and were crowned on the 11th of April 1689. During the king’s absence from England the queen, assisted by a committee of the privy council, was entrusted with the duties of government, duties which she performed faithfully, but which she gladly laid down on William’s return. In these times of danger, however, she acted when necessary with courage and promptitude, as when in 1690 she directed the arrest of her uncle Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon; but she was constantly anxious for William’s safety, and unable to trust many of her advisers. She was further distressed by a quarrel with her sister Anne in 1692 following the dismissal of Marlborough, and this event somewhat diminished her popularity, which had hitherto been one of the mainstays of the throne. Weak in body and troubled in mind, the queen died at Kensington Palace from small-pox on the 28th of December 1694, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Mary was a woman of a remarkably modest and retiring disposition, whose outstanding virtue was perhaps her unswerving loyalty to William. Burnet has passed a remarkable panegyric upon her character. She was extremely pious and charitable; her blameless private life was in marked contrast with her surroundings, both in England and Holland; without bigotry she was greatly attached to the Protestant faith and to the Church of England; and she was always eager to improve the tone of public morals, and to secure a better observance of Sunday. Greenwich Hospital for Seamen was founded in her honour.