medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> 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
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