> with due respect, I wonder how the analogy Mary / Venus would work.
> First of all Mary is no goddess, and was never thought to be one. ...
> She has no power over the fate of mortals
What I can't help finding more and more remarkable is how dichotomous the discourse on Mary has been and continues to be. Some take a theological line, i.e.
that Mary is no goddess and has no power over the fate of mortals. And there are all sorts of theological writings that support such completely orthodox ideas. Yet, when one looks at the social contexts and functions of devotion to Mary during the Middle Ages, it certainly appears that devotion specifically to her essentially took over the social functions that were formerly served by devotion to pre-Christian goddesses. Possibly as early as the 6th century, for example, she took over from pagan cults in the protection of Constantinople. As the early 7th-century Akathistos hymn puts it:
Unto you, O Theotokos, invincible champion, Your city, in thanksgiving ascribes the victory for the
deliverance from sufferings.
And having your might unassailable,
free me from all dangers, so that I may cry
unto you: "Hail! O bride unwedded."
And from about the 11th century onwards, very similar sentiments can be traced in western Europe, not only to Mary as an invincible military champion, but as a healer, a freer of prisoners, a protector of sailors, a holy midwife, a garantor of fecundity (both human and agricultural), a sky goddess who controls the rains, etc., etc. There is little hint that the Church protested these social roles for Marian devotion, and much evidence that they supported it. What I can't figure out is whether that makes the Church schizoid, or whether we are dealing with a classic case of double-think, or what. Whatever the case, there is no theological rationale for the remarkably common confluence of Marian pilgrimage sites and miraculous springs and wells, or grottoes, or trees. There were thousands of such combinations all over Europe. Maybe that's why another line in the Akathistos hymn claims:
Hail! to you who has redeemed us from pagan religion.
I'm beginning to believe that there was no one medieval "Mary" but that she was
(almost) all things to all people, depending on the circumstances. And sometimes she could be different things to the same people, at different times and for different reasons. And maybe even different things to the same people at the same time!
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
Respondeo:
Yet indeed. There are of course many different levels of theological competence, and indeed general intellectual competence, at work. It happens that a year or two ago I was concelebrating with a fellow priest, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. My role for most of the Mass was to sit there looking interested. A difficulty arose during my colleague's homily when he began, "The thing to remember about Mary is that she was Immaculate, and she was Conceived." As he chuntered on, it became obvious that he hadn't any idea what the word 'conceived' meant. But he continued: "The very fact that she was Conceived made her already half-way to being God" (he really did say that).
I sat there feeling very uncomfortable for two reasons. One was that I was hearing some roaring heresies preached in the name of the Catholic religion; the other was that I had the feeling that nobody else present was aware of the fact. Were the good people in the congregation nodding and saying to themselves, "Yes indeed! She was conceived! That does make her almost God!"
I was reassured later on the second point. Some at least of those present could recognise nonsense when they heard it, perhaps because most of them were women and knew what 'conceived' meant. But my colleague continues, so far as I know, to chunter, to this day.
No doubt there were plenty of chunterers in the Middle Ages. Even now, with communications and structures that their medieval counterparts could not have dreamed of, the authorities of the Church find it impossible to silence or correct chunterers; how much more so in the Middle Ages.
Bill.
