Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/619

Rh THE VIRGIN.] M A R Y 591 The epithets applied to her in the Greek Church are such as d/AoA.wTos, TroVayvos, dyia ; but in the East generally no clear distinction is drawn between immunity from actual sin and original sirilessness. Her Peculiar Relation to the Godhead, ivhich specially fits her for Successful Intercession on Behalf of Mankind. It seems probable that. the epithet 0eoroKos (&quot; Mother of God&quot;) was first applied to Mary by theologians of Alexandria towards the close of the 3d 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 Marise, in which the word is of frequent occur rence. 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 ^eoro/coshas no part in God (Orat., li. p. 738). 1 If, as is not unlikely, its use was first recom mended 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 (-n-avriyvpis Trap^evi/o?) 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 &quot; the holy Virgin and Mother of God &quot; as &quot; the spotless treasure-house of virginity, the spiritual paradise of the second Adam ; the workshop in which the two natures were welded together .... the one bridge between God and men &quot;; 2 in the latter she is saluted as the &quot;mother and virgin,&quot; &quot; through whom (Si 175) 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.&quot; 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 course of 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 effect of relegating the God-man redeemer for ordinary minds into a far away region of &quot; remote and awful Godhead,&quot; so that the need for a mediator to deal with the very Mediator could not fail to be felt. On the other hand, it must be accepted as a fact abundantly proved by history that the religious instincts of mankind are very ready to pay worship, in grosser or more refined forma, 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 1 See Gieseler (KG., Bd. i. Abth. 1), who points out instances in which anti-Arianizing zeal went so far as to call David Oeoirdrup, and James d5eA&amp;lt;J&amp;gt;o 0eos. 2 Labbe, Cone., vol. Hi. p. 51. Considerable extracts are given by Augusti (Dcnkio. iii.) ; see also Milman (Lat. Christ., i. 185), who characterizes much of it as a &quot;wild labyrinth of untranslatable metaphor.&quot; 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 itself to. At all events, from the time of the council of Ephesus, to ex hibit figures of the Virgin and Child became the approved ex pression of orthodoxy, and the relationship of motherhood in which Mary had been formally declared to stand to God 3 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 occasion ally. 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 Marian passed current. 4 There we read of Mary s prayer to Christ : &quot; Do Thou bestow Thine aid upon every man calling upon, or praying to, or naming the name of Thine handmaid&quot;; to which His answer is, &quot; 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.&quot; But Gregory of Nazianzus also, in his panegyric upon Justina, mentions with incidental approval that in her hour of peril she &quot; implored Mary the Virgin to come to the aid of a virgin in her danger.&quot; 5 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. 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 recog nizes her as the most exalted of all creatures, and apostro phizes her as deified and endowed with all power in heaven and in earth, yet not forgetful of our race. 6 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, 3 The term QeoroKos does not actually occur in the canons of Ephesus. It is found, however, in the creed of Chalcedon. 4 It is true that Ireureus (Hier., v. 19, 1) in the passage in which he draws his well-known parallel and contrast between the first and second Eve (comp. Justin, Dial. c. Tryph., 100), to the effect that, &quot;as the human race fell into bondage to death by a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin,&quot; takes occasion to speak of Mary as the &quot; advocata &quot; of Eve ; but it seems certain that this word is a translation of the Greek ffvvhyopos, and implies hostility and rebuke rather than advocacy. 5 It is probable that the commemorations and invocations of the Virgin which occur in the present texts of the ancient liturgies of &quot;St James&quot; and &quot;St Mark&quot; are due to interpolation. In this connexion ought also to be noted the chapter in Epiphanius (liter., 79) against the &quot;Collyridians,&quot; certain women in Thrace, Scythia, and Arabia, who were in the habit of worshipping the Virgin (aet irapQevov] as a goddess, the offering of a cake (Kovpi5a riva) being one of the features of their worship. He rebukes them for offering the worship which was due to the Trinity alone ; &quot;let Mary be held in honour, but by no means worshipped.&quot; The cultus was probably a relic of heathenism ; compare Jerem. xliv. 19. 6 &quot; Numquid quia ita deificata, ideo nostoe humanitatis oblita es? Nequaquam, Domina. . . . Data est tibi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra. Nil tibi impossibile. &quot; Serm. de Nativ. Marias, ap, Gieseler, KG., Bd. ii. Abth. 1.