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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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.” 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. 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. In 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 between latria and dulia, and declare 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 the comparative reserve shown by the council of Trent in its decrees, and even in its catechism, on 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-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.

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.,  ), to commemorate the beginning of her stay in the Temple, as recorded in the Protevangelium 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.,  ), 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, ,  ) is otherwise known as. (4) The Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary (Annunciatio,  ). 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, ,  ,  ) 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 in