Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/620

Rh 502 MARY [THE VIRGIN. alike of the Greek and of the Roman Church, distinguish formally between &quot; latria &quot; and &quot; dulia,&quot; and declare that the &quot; worship &quot; to be paid to the mother of God must never exceed that superlative degree of &quot; dulia &quot; which is vaguely described as &quot; hyperdulia.&quot; On the other hand, it must be remembered that the comparative reserve shown by the council of Trent in its decrees, and even in its catechism, 1 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 respon sible 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 litera ture. A good r^sumd of recent Catholic developments of the cultus of Mary is to be found 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 (Preesentatio B. V. M,, TO, etVoSia rrjs tfeorJ/cou), to commemorate the beginning of her stay in the temple, as recorded in the Protcvangclium Jacobi (see above). It is be lieved to have originated in the East sometime in the 8th cen tury, 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 It was introduced into the &quot;Western Church late in the 14th century, and, after having been withdrawn from the calendar by Pius V., was restored by Sixtus V., the day observed both in East and West being November 21. It is not mentioned in the English calendar. (2) The Feast of the Conception (Conceptio B. V. M., Conceptio Im- maculata B. V. M., ffv^is TTJS ayias&quot;A.wr]s), observed by the Roman Catholic Church on December 8, and by all the Eastern churches on December 9, has already been explained (see IMMACU LATE CONCEPTION) ; in the Greek Church it only ranks as one of the middle festivals of Mary. (3) The Feast of the Purification (Occursus, Obviatio, Prasscntatio, Festum SS. Simconis ct Annas, Purificatio, Canddaria, virairavTri, inravTT}) is otherwise known as CANDLEMAS (q.v.). (4) The Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary (Annunciatio, Evayyeia-fj.6s); see ANNUNCIATION. It may be mentioned that at the Toledan council in 656 it was decreed that this festival should be observed on December 18, 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 commemo ration of the visit paid by Mary to Elizabeth. It is observed on July 2, and has been retained in the English calendar. (6) The Feast of the Assumption (Dormitio, Pausatio, Transitus, Depositio, Migratio, Assumptio, Koljj.t]ffis, yueTa&amp;lt;TTa&amp;lt;m, avd]^is) has reference to the apocryphal story related in several forms in various docu ments of the 4th century condemned by Pope Gelasius. Their general purport is that as the time drew nigh for &quot; the most blessed Virgin &quot; (who is also spoken of as &quot; Holy Mary,&quot; the queen of all the saints,&quot; &quot; the holy spotless Mother of God &quot;) 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 &quot;the spotless and precious body &quot; had been laid in the tomb, &quot; suddenly there shone round them (the apostles) a miraculous light,&quot; 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 August 15 ; the Armenian Church also commemorates it, 1 The 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 dis positions towards us are extremely gracious ; that her images are of the utmost utility. In the Missal her 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 September 8, and for the Festival of the Seven Sorrows (decreed by Benedict XIII. in 1727). Noteworthy are the versicles in the office for December 8 (The Feast of the Immaculate Conception), &quot;Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te,&quot; and &quot;Gloriosa dicta suut de te, Maria, quia fecit tibi magna qui potens est.&quot; mt the Ethiopia Church celebrates her death and burial on two separate days. The earliest allusion to the existence of such a estival in the Western Church seems to be that found in the pro- thirty -sixth canon of the reforming synod of Mainz, held in 813. It was not, however, at that time universal, being mentioned as doubtful in the capitularies of Charlemagne. It ought to be observed that the doctrine of the bodily assumption of the Virgin into heaven, although extensively believed, and indeed flowing as natural theological consequence from that of her sinlessness, has never been declared to be &quot; de fide&quot; by the Church of Rome, and is still merely a &quot;pia sententia.&quot; (7) The Nativity of Mary [Nativitas, ytvfQKwv TTJS OeoroKov), observed on September 8, is first mentioned in one of the homilies of Andrew of Crete (c. 750), and along 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 quite unknown at that time in the Gallican Church, and even two centuries later it was by no means general in Italy. In the Roman 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. (J. S. BL.) MARY I., queen of England (1516-1558), unpleasantly remembered as &quot; the Bloody Mary &quot; on account of the religious persecutions sanctioned under her reign, was a woman whose private history demands no less compassion than her policy as queen (if indeed it was her own) merits the condemnation of a more humane and tolerant age. She 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 she was little more than four years of age, 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 &quot; with as much assurance and facility as if she had been twelve years old&quot; (Gayangos, iii. pt. 1, 82). Her father, against whom it cannot be said that ho depreciated learning, had taken care to give her an excellent education, and 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 con sulted 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 many other high-born ladies in those days that her prospects of life were made a matter of sordid bargaining from the first. Political alliances to be cemented by marriages between persons who were at the time mere infants or perhaps, more shameful still, between a child and a superannuated debauchee are among the most repulsive features of the times. 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 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 the powerful cousin whom she had never seen, not many years passed away before Charles released himself from this engagement and made a more convenient match. In 1526 a rearrangement was mnde of the royal household, and it
 * eedings of the synod of Salzburg in 800; it is also spoken of in the