There are very few details of her life. What is known is in the Gospels, mostly picturesque references written by sages who lived more than a century after her death. We know of her, of course, due to the great life and death of her son. Yet Mary, daughter of Galilean parents, with the Hebrew name, Miriam, became the most influential woman and mother in human history.In the art of the early church, she is depicted as a queen to Jesus, the emperor.
The largely illiterate flock of the young church needed visual stimulus to aid in their prayer and to comprehend biblical stories. The Byzantine Church sought to move worshipers away from pagan ties. With the almost geometric increase of saints and martyrs vying for attention, and in direct conflict with the proscription against graven images in the Old Testament, the Church mass-produced icons of their faces, including otherworldly, often sorrowful portraits of Mary.
In the fifth and sixth centuries Christian religious leaders sublimated worship of Hellenic and Egyptian gods (among others), retaining from these symbols their most loving features. The “cult of Mary” was awarded August 13 each year as the Feast of the Assumption, on the day formerly reserved for Isis and Artemis, pagan goddesses of fertility and the hunt.Through the following centuries, the common people assigned to Mary the spirit of all motherhood. The special place in their hearts and aspirations for the Virgin influenced the development of Christianity and world culture simultaneously.
After the terrors of the Dark Ages (reflected in what was a harsh religious environment), people sought a more humane environment in which to pray. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the idolatry of Mary, called “Mariology,” made her the most beloved figure in history. No longer was the demanding God sternly casting damned souls into Hell. The Blessed Virgin would save her children, give them warmth, good health, hope. She had pity, a mother’s compassion.Mary became for many medieval Christians almost a part of the Trinity. Although a role for her in the Trinity was denied by theologians, her developing role as protector and intermediary with God transformed the Church into a more caring institution.
Church fathers from Augustine to Popes in recent times took special care in defining her place in the religious hierarchy. The Gospels stated that Jesus was “born of a woman.” Some assigned this the Hebraic definition meaning that Jesus was a human being, truly a man. Without a human parent, his activity among men would be too supernatural. Others denied the virgin birth, asserting that they did so in the name of humanity. How could Jesus be human if not born as others were? This question of the guarantee of the Incarnation remains controversial. Like belief in Jesus as divine, it remains fundamentally a matter of faith.Although textual variants in the Gospel of Matthew include lines that “Joseph begat Jesus,” the greatest amount of Christian writings concerning Mary are about her virginity.
It is the almost unanimous teaching of Catholicism that Mary conceived Jesus with her virginity intact.That her virginity was unimpaired was tied to the Pauline concept of original sin. All people are inherently sinful, said Paul. The later Church (as late as the 1800s in official dogma) declared that she was immaculate. At the very moment of her conception she was freed from sin.It was stated by theologians in the fourth century that Mary was the theotokos, the “God bearer.” When Jesus was pronounced divine at that time by the Church, her title as the Mother of God followed logically. Her sacred purpose inspired icon painters in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Others viewed her as the symbol of humanity’s redemption through nature.
The minnesingers and troubadours of the Middle Ages sang praises to her perfect nobility. Through her, chivalry was born. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Italian Renaissance artists saw her as the exemplar of ideal beauty. “Ave Maria,” full of grace, was sung with consoling warmth in Catholic churches. Much of the loveliness of Christian art was inspired by the physical beauty of woman, personified by Mary’s image.Mary became the Church’s symbol of family and the central role of the mother. Christian visions of apocalypse and terror (inspired no doubt more from the plague of life in the Dark Ages than from religion) were transformed into dreams of mercy and compassion.
In modern times, the symbol of Mary, full of warmth and grace, has been altered by some philosophers, psychoanalysts, feminists, and entertainers. Recast as a female goddess figure, cited as the origin of the “whore/Madonna” syndrome of male oppression, or exploited by an Catholic Italian American rock star into one of the most profitable (and debased) show business reputations, the myth of Mary, even if corrupted, retains remarkable powers.