Mary

(2) Her Absolute Sinlessness.

While much of the apocry phal 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 as serts that she was born in original sin (De gen. ad lit. x. 18) ; and the locus classicus regarding her possible immunity from actual transgression, on which the subsequent doctrine of Lom bardus and his commentators was based, is simply an extremely guarded passage (De nat. et grat. ch. 36), in which, while con tradicting 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 dens 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 mod ern 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 remon strated with by Bernard, see IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. The epithets applied to her in the Greek Church are such as ap6Xurros, ravcryvos, iravayia but in the East generally no clear distinction is drawn between immunity from actual sin and original sinlessness.

(3) Her Peculiar Relation to the Godhead, which Spe cially Fits Her for Successful Intercession on Behalf of Mankind.—It seems probable that the epithet OEOTOKOS ("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 apocryphal Transitus 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 been 0E0T6KOS has no part in God (Drat. li. p. 738). If 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 correspond ing 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 suffi cient in illustration of the drift of theological opinion to refer to the first sermon of Proclus, preached on a certain festival of the Virgin at Constantinople about the year 43o, 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"; in the latter she is saluted as the "mother and virgin," "through whom (61.' is) the Trinity is glorified and worshipped, the Cross of the Saviour exalted and honoured, through whom Heaven tri umphs, 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 cele brating 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 prac tical effect of 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. Perhaps 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 untram melled 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 mother hood in which Mary had been formally declared to stand to God was 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. Previous 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 the Transitus Mariae passed current. There 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 pres ence of My Father in the heavens." But Gregory of Nazianzus also, in his panegyric upon Justina, mentions with incidental ap proval that in her hour of peril she "implored Mary the Virgin to come to the aid of a virgin in her danger." Of 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. Jus tinian 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. 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 between latria and dulia, and de clare that the "worship" to be paid to the Mother of God must never exceed that superlative degree of dulia which is vaguely described as hyperdulia. But 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 ex aggerated expressions in such works as the well-known Glories of Mary and others frequently quoted in controversial literature. There is a good résumé of Catholic developments of the cultus of Mary in Pusey's Eirenicon.