~ oes pre. BAS Gas Ne : 5. i ‘ i i fe i fs coe Fe ae eat a i Ht ny te te Be iy re iG my Ries Gist Tee Stes eres gn iba els tet Hite eee rated eth . Sentra Eaea i? a yr S Petits i flay bgt aye paris + eine, . te Cen + rate Taps ecaremirabar a Fad a steetatit Pha taacaoe tal ana oo Ser tats tee toh eieatr case uf at Nz fe nyects etree sicher Ne tispstthdtg : a : seer aS aha i is t reney 4 palit teats Paks estiee UG ithe Ph Fir at aperiss easeeagrtletea sete a ¥ ce Rahs rt on OF PRINCE ’, DEP2O 1910 i. AS RN SOL agieny cise ee BT Liloop 7 1 9t9. v6 Pohle, Joseph, 1852-1922. Mariology Mihognt ‘ < apr tes a Te? ie : : dtl 4 f ‘ tw . Seyi Si ; are ahs Nom Ue ae eae iy pba Miles, ¥ t THE POHLE-PREUSS SERIES OF DOG- MATIC TEXT-BOOKS God: His Knowability, Essence, and At- tributes. 2nd ed., vi & 479 pp., net $2.00. The Divine Trinity. 2nd ed., iv & 297 pp,. net $1.50. God the Author of Nature and the Super- natural. 2nd ed., v & 365 pp., net $1.75. Christology. A Dogmatic Treatise on the Incarnation. iv & 309 pp., net $1.50. Soteriology. A Dogmatic Treatise on the Redemption. 2nd ed., iv & 167 pp., net $1.00. Mariology. A Dogmatic Treatise on the B. V. Mary. With an Appendix on the Worship of the Saints, Relics, and Images. 2nd ed., iv & 185 pp., net $1.00. Grace: Actual and Habitual. iv & 443 pp., net $2.00. The Sacraments in General. Baptism. Confirmation. iv & 328 pp., net $1.50. The Holy Eucharist. iv & 408 pp., net $1.75. Penance. iv & 270 pp., $1.50 net. Extreme Unction. Holy Orders. Matri- mony. iv & 249 pp., $1.50 net. Eschatology. iv & 164 pp., $1.50 net. The Whole Set, $18 net aaa OF PIES {4 x¥ Z 10, MARIOLOG A DOGMATIC TREATISE ON THE - BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, MOTHER OF GOD WITH AN APPENDIX ON THE WORSHIP OF THE SAINTS, RELICS, AND IMAGES BY y THE RT. REV. MSGR. JOSEPH POHLE, P#_D., D.D. FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY AT ST. JOSEPH’S SEMINARY, LEEDS (ENGLAND), LATER PRO- FESSOR OF FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY IN THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA ADAPTED AND EDITED BY ARTHUR PREUSS THIRD, REVISED EDITION B. HERDER BOOK CO. 17 SOUTH Broapway, ST, Louis, Mo. AND 68 GreaT RussELL St. Lonpon, W. C. 1919 NIHIL OBSTAT Sti. Ludovici, die 11 Feb. 1919 Ff. G. Holweck, Censor Librorum IMPRIMATUR Stt. Ludovici, die 12 Feb. 1919 i Joannes J. Glennon, Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovics Copyright, 1914 by Joseph Gummersbach All rights reserved Printed in U.S. A. First Edition 1914 Second Edition 1916 Third Edition 1919 BECKTOLD PRINTING & BOOK MFG. CO. ST. LOUIS, U.S. A. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE PNPM OE CL POUING Gir Re oN shin Vi UanEH wrth x gslah Ned oI oA KANE Tae Ratt a Nae Part I. Mary’s DivinE MoTHERHOOD AS THE SOURCE OF ALL HERI PREROGATIVESH Ski si Ge Wi Ue hari Hern iad te coh hit Gait Mary’ the «Mother, (of /;Godyy ei ae rei aea e NA Cu. II. Mary’s Dignity as Mother of God and the Graces Attached to Her Divine Motherhood . . . . 15 § 1. The Objective Dignity of Mary’s Divine Mother- TB aOAY: GIAO ERR ICOM TSN LB GARRITY CR NTECQRS MENS AML EPS 8) § 2, Mary’s Fulness of Grace... +. ON yt an a ook Parrill. MARY'S) SPECIAL, PREROGATIVES {4) ec is Siugea tren Se. Cu. I. The Negative Prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin 38 § 1. Mary’s Immaculate Conception . . . + . + 39 $' 2, Mary's Sinlessness '.) SRA S AMEIE NAN TU ISR EUS ARAN (ag § 3. Mary’s Perpetual Virginity NUH AUR ia ste: § 4. Mary’s Bodily Assumption into es ACER 0 Cu. II. The Positive Prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin 120 § 1. Mary’s Secondary Mediatorship . . . - - . 2! § 2. The Cult of the Blessed Virgin . . . . - © 133 APPENDIX. ON THE WorSHIP OF THE SAINTS, RELICS, AND TREASON ee ACE ANWR et otal Ube Si ty Weiic) WenlweiRTe ae CH.\-1.. The Worship ofthe Saints). (ny en ieee) 140 PGE TE They Worship) of pRelica, Shoo ealhan Ue eng 253 @u clits che Worship of mages iis eu a seks nate pvas ee LOS INDEX e e ° ° ° o~ ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° e ° ® ° 181 INTRODUCTION Mariology is that part of Dogmatic Theology which treats of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Divine Redeemer. Mariology is closely related to both Christol- ogy and Soteriology.”. Mary is truly Deipara because Christ is truly Godman. As His mother she is the mother of our Redeemer, and thus in- timately bound up with the atonement. The chief prerogative of the Blessed Virgin iS her divine motherhood. From it flow all her other prerogatives. Hence Mariology naturally falls into two main divisions: (1) The divine motherhood of Mary considered as the source of all her prerogatives, and (2) These prerogatives considered in themselves. 1 Pohle-Preuss, Christology. A 2 Pohle-Preuss, Soteriology. A Dogmatic Treatise on the Incarna- Dogmatic Treatise on the Redemp- tion, 2nd ed., St, Louis 1916. tion, 2nd ed., St. Louis 1916, Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding trom Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/mariologydogmati00pohl_1 PARTI MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD AS THE SOURCE OF ALL HER PREROGATIVES The Blessed Virgin Mary is really and truly the Mother of God. This fact is the source and font of all her privileges. The dignity of divine motherhood has its correlative in a series of su- pernatural gifts, which by a general term we may describe as “fulness of grace” (plenitudo gratiae ). CHAPTER a MARY THE MOTHER OF GOD 1. THe Heresy or NEsToRIANISM.—The Ebionites, Photinus, and Paul of Samosata had undermined the dignity of Mary by attacking the Divinity of Jesus Christ; Nestorianism directly assailed the dogma of her divine motherhood. a) Nestorius was a pupil of Theodore of Mop- suestia,® who held that the Incarnation involved a complete transformation of the Logos, and that, consequently, Mary was the mother not of God (Gordxos), but of a mere man, though this man was the bearer of the Divine Logos.* This Mariological error naturally developed into the Christological heresy that there are two physical persons in Christ. b) The Third Ecumenical Council, which met in Ephesus on Whitsunday, 431, under the presi- dency of St. Cyril of Alexandria,’ defined it as an article of faith that Mary is really and truly the 3 Theodore of Mopsuestia was 4Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, born about the year 350. On his pp. 89 sq. life and writings cfr. Bardenhewer- 5 Cfr. Funk-Cappadelta, 4 Man- Shahan, Patrology, pp. 318 sqq., ual of Church History, Vol. I, pp. Freiburg and St. Louis 1908. 156 sq., London 1910 4 MARY THE MOTHER OF GOD 5 mother of God. To emphasize this truth the Council employed the dogmatic term 9ore«os, which was destined to become a touchstone of the true faith and, like opoovows, transsubstantiatio, and ex opere operato, played an important part in the his- tory of dogma. The very first of the anathematisms pronounced by the Council of Ephesus reads: “If any one does not profess that Emmanuel is truly God, and that consequently the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God—inasmuch as she gave birth in the flesh to the Word of God made flesh, according to what is written: “The Word was made flesh’—let him be anathema.” ® This important definition was reiterated and confirmed by several later councils, notably those of Chalcedon (A. D. 451) and Con- stantinople (A. D. 553).” 2. THE DocMa or Mary’s Divine MoruHer- HOOD PROVED FROM SACRED SCRIPTURE.—The dogma that Mary is the mother of God is clearly and explicitly contained in Holy Scripture. a) True, the Bible does not employ the formal term ‘‘Mother of God,” but refers to the Blessed 6“ Si quis non confitetur, Deum esse veracitter Emmanuel et propterea Dei genitricem (@eorékoyv) sanctam virginem: peperit (yeyévynKke) enim secundum carnem factum Dei Ver- bum (cdpxa yeyovéta Tov éx Oeod Abyor), secundum quod scriptum est: Verbum caro factum est, anathema sit.” (Syn. Ephes., can. I, apud Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchi- ridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fides et Morum, n. 113, 11th ed. Friburgi Brisgoviae 1g11. We shall refer to this indispensable collection through- out this treatise as ‘’ Denzinger- Bannwart.” 7 Conc. Constantinop. II (Oecum. V), apud Denzinger-Bannwart, n,. 218, 6 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD Virgin merely as “the mother of Jesus’ ® or at most as “mother of the Lord.” ® However, since Jesus Christ is true God, all texts that refer to Mary as His mother are so many proofs of her divine maternity. And such texts abound. Thus, while Sacred Scripture represents St. Joseph *° merely as the foster-father of our Lord,** it attributes to Mary all the ordinary functions of motherhood—conception, gestation, and parturition.’*? The motherhood of the Virgin had been foretold by Isaias: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel [7. e., God with us].” ** The fulfilment of this prophecy was announced in almost identical terms by the Archangel Ga- briel. Luke I, 31: “Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb,** and shalt bring forth a son,” and thou shalt call his name Jesus;” and the heavenly messenger expressly added: “Therefore the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” *® Since Mary gave birth to the Son of God, she is really and truly the mother of God. St. Paul says in his Epistle to 8 Cfr. John II, 1; XIX, 26. AS SVE ta Cre ake eas, 9 Cfr. Luke I, 43. 10 Cfr. Matth. I, 25; Luke I, 34 sq. = 11-Cfr. Luke III, 23: ‘ Et -tpse Iesus erat incipiens quasi annorum triginta, ut putabatur (as évo- pltero) filius Ioseph.” 14 Cfr. Matth. I, 18 sqq.; Luke Tl, 5 sqq. S. J., Christ in Type and Prophecy, Volo 1, ‘pp. 351 saq.;. New \ York 1893. 14“ Concipies in utero (ovr- Aneyn év yaorpi).” 15“ Paries filium (ré&y vidy).” 16 “ Filius Dei (vids Qeov).” MARY THE MOTHER OF GOD 4 the Galatians (IV, 4): “When the fulness of © time was come, God sent his son, made of a woman )°* Tf) the man’ Jesus,(made; obvd woman,” is the Son of God, then that ‘“woman’’ must be the mother of a Divine Son, and, conse- quently, mother of God.*® b) The argument from Tradition is most ef- fectively presented by showing from the writings of the Fathers who flourished before the time of Nestorius that Nestorianism and not the Council of Ephesus was guilty of innovation. a) Primitive Christian belief in the divine mother- hood of Mary is evidenced by Christian practice long before the time when the faithful began to make their belief the subject of reflection, particularly in the recita- tion of the Apostles’ Creed and the liturgical prayers employed in public worship. The Apostles’ Creed pro- fesses faith in “Jesus Christ, His [God the Father’s] only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.” This is an unequi- vocal assertion of two truths: (1) that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the mother of Christ, and (2) that she is really and truly the mother of God. The ancient liturgies expressly refer to her as Oeordxos or Deipara.! 17 7rév vidv —abrow yevouevoy 1900. Engl. tr. by Brossart, New é€x yuvatkés. York 1913, pp. 89 sqq. 18 Rom, IX, 5. The Biblical argu- 19 For the proofs of this state- ment is fully developed by Bishop A, ment see Renaudot, Collect. Liturg. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter in der Orient, tid.) Pp» 136, 42372: 122} Hl. Schrift, pp. 83 sqq., Minster 150, 507, etc., Paris 1716. 8 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD B) There is direct Patristic evidence to the same effect. In spite of a few dissenting voices (e. g., The- odore of Mopsuestia and other teachers of the Antiochene school), the orthodox contemporaries of Nestorius confidently appealed to the early Fathers in support of their contention. The word %oréxos itself originated at Alexan- dria in the third century.” St. Cyril freely admits that it does not occur in the New Testament. But he hastens to add: “ However, they have handed down to us the belief [itself], and in this sense we have been instructed by the holy Fathers [== sacred writers].” *\—“ This name Oeordxos,” he says in another place, “was perfectly familiar to the ancient Dathers!)?? There is a treatise “ On the Mother of God” 2? men- tioned in the extracts of Philippus Sidetes,2* and ascribed by him to Prierius, a priest of Alexandria in the time of Bishop Theonas (281-300); but its authenticity is doubtful. We know for certain, however, that, at about the same time, Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, who had ordained St. Athanasius to the diaconate in 319, em- ployed the term @cordécos in a letter addressed to Alex- ander of Constantinople in reference to the heresy of Arius. We also have the undoubtedly genuine testi- mony of Theodoret of Cyrus, the most violent and at 20 It first occurs in the works of 22 De Recta Fide ad Regin., c. 9. Origen. On the history of the 23 TIepi THs OeordKov- term see Newman, Select Treatises 24 On Philippus Sidetes and his of St. Athanasius, Vol. II, pp. 210- ~owritings cfr. Bardenhewer-Shahan, 215, oth ed., London 1903. Pairology, p. 377. 21Ep. ad Monach. Aegypti, I MARY THE MOTHER OF GOD 9 the same time most learned opponent of St. Cyril, to the effect that “ The first step towards innovation was the assertion that the holy Virgin, who, by the assumption of flesh from herself, gave birth to the Word of God, must not be called mother of God (@coréxos), but only mother of Christ (xpicrotéxos), whereas the most an- cient heralds of the orthodox faith taught the faithful to name and believe the Mother of the Lord Geordxos, according to the Apostolic tradition.” ?° John, Patriarch of Antioch, who sided with Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus and did not make peace with St. Cyril till 433, observes: “No ecclesiastical teacher has put aside this title [| Ocordxos] ; those who have used it are many and eminent, and those who have not used it have not attacked those who used it.” *° This statement can be easily substantiated from the writings of St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Ignatius of Antioch, and*others of the early Fathers. Thus St. Athanasius (+ 373) says: ‘‘ We confess that the Son of God became man by the assumption of flesh from the virgin mother of God.’ ?? St. Gregory Nazianzen declares: “ Let him who will not accept Mary as the mother of God be excluded from God.” ?8 The word Ocoroxos must have readily suggested itself to the later Fathers when they noted such expressions as this in the Epistle of St. Ignatius to the Ephesians: “Our God Jesus Christ was borne (éxvodop76)) by Mary in her maternal womb.” 7° | It is not necessary for our present purpose to cite the 25 Theodoretus, “ Compendium of Misne (Psi Gi ee Ly bass, Heretical Fables” (Aipetuxyjs Kako- (Cfr. Newman, 1. ¢., p. 211.) uvdias émcroun), IV, 12. We use 27ék mapbévov THs GeoTdKou. Newman’s translation (Athanasius, Orat. contra Arianos, IV, n. 32. II, 210). 28 Epist. tor ad Cledon., G I. 26 Ep. ad Rete. Jf Sian in 29 Epist. ad Ephes., 8. 10 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD Fathers who wrote after the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus. The teaching of the Greek Fathers was sifted with Scholastic thoroughness by St. John of Damascus in the third part of his famous “ Fountain of Wisdom.” 20 3. T'HEOLoGicaL Discusston.—For a deeper understanding of the dogma let us consider in what motherhood essentially consists, and how Christ’s eternal yéos from the Father is related to His temporal birth from the Virgin Mary. a) Nestorius’ chief objection grew out of a radically false idea of motherhood. He con- tended that Mary could not have been the mother of God because this would necessarily entail the pagan fallacy that God begot a divine son from a human mother, or that a human mother en- dowed her son with a divine nature. This in- ference is based on a misconception of the Hy- postatic Union and of the nature of generation. To become truly the mother of God it was not necessary for Mary to communicate to her Son a divine nature. All that was required was that the Son whom she conceived and brought forth, was the Divine Person of the Logos. Every mother, when she gives birth to a child, brings forth a person, not merely the body of a person. In the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary this person was the Son of God. Hence, though 80De Fide Orthodoxa, III, 2 “Alter des Titels @eordéxos,” in and 12, Cfr. Petavius, De JIn- the Katholik, of Mayence, 1903, I, carnatione, V, 153 V. Schweitzer, pp. 97 sqq. MARY THE MOTHER OF GOD II Mary did not bring forth the Godhead as such, but © merely a Divine Person, she is truly the Mother of God. The fact that she conceived and gave birth to the body but not to the spiritual soul of her son in no way derogates from her mother- hood. “No one will say of Elizabeth,” observes St. Cyril to Nestorius, “that she is the mother of St. John’s flesh, but not of his soul; for she gave birth to the person of the Baptist, 2. e., a human being composed of body and soul.” *? Mary not only gave birth to the Divine Logos, she also conceived Him. If it could be shown that she con- ceived a mere man, even though this man was subse- quently, before his birth, transformed into a Godman, Nestorius would have been justified in denying her the title of Geordxos, for in that hypothesis she would indeed have been a mere dvOpwrordxos, since motherhood is founded on the act of conception. It was with a view to safeguard the dogma of the Hypostatic Union that the Church dogmatically defined the temporal coincidence of Christ’s conception with the Hypostatic Union.*? The conception of Christ includes three simultaneous events: (1) the formation of His human body from the maternal ovum; (2) the creation and infusion into that body of a spiritual soul; and (3) the Hypostatic Union of body and soul, per modum unius, with the Divine Person of the Logos. When Mary said: “ Be- hold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me accord- 31 Epist. ad Monach. 32 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, pp. 166 sqq. 2 12 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD ing to thy word,” ** the mystery of the Incarnation was consummated. | From the fact that these three events occurred simul- taneously, the medieval Scholastics concluded that our Lord’s body was informed by the spiritual soul from the first moment of its existence, and that it was at once complete and perfectly organized.** The last-mentioned of these conclusions was based on the false Aristotelian theory that the human embryo is at first inanimate and be- comes quickened by the spiritual soul only after it has reached a certain stage of physiological development,— a process which in the male was believed to require forty, in the female, sixty days from the*instant of conception. As this principle was manifestly inapplicable to Christ, the Scholastics had recourse to a miracle and simply de- nied the existence of successive stages in the embryolog- ical evolution of the Godman. It is more in conformity with modern science to assume that the spiritual soul informs the human embryo from the moment of conception and gradually builds up the body and its organs, until the child becomes normally capable of living outside the uterus. Applying this theory to Christ, we hold that Christ’s spiritual soul was infused into the inchoate embryo at the moment of His conception. This is but another way of saying that the sacred humanity of our Divine Lord was sub- ject to the ordinary laws of human development, and that He became like unto us in all things except sin.°° The objection that a being composed of a spiritual soul and an incomplete body would not be a true man, 33 Luke I, 38. 34 Cfr. Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 11, sect. 2. 35 Heb. IV, 15. MARY THE MOTHER OF GOD 13 may be dismissed with the remark that such a being falls squarely under the philosophical definition of animal rationale. If we except Christ from the general law of nature and postulate unnecessary miracles, we divest the mother- hood of the Blessed Virgin of its true meaning and teach a refined Docetism. For the gradual development of a child under the influence of the plastic powers of nature constitutes one of the essential notes of maternity. b) As there are two natures in Christ, a dis- tinction must be made between His eternal gen- eration from the Father and His temporal birth from the Virgin Mother. This basic dogma of Christology °° necessarily entails a twofold son- ship. By His eternal yes from the Father, Jesus is the true Son of God; by His temporal birth from the Virgin He is the true Son of Mary. Being one undivided person, the Son of God is therefore absolutely identical with the child of the Virgin, and Mary is consequently in very truth the mother of God. It follows that the dogma of Christ’s twofold sonship does not in- volve the Nestorian and Adoptionist implication that there are two Sons of God. Theologians have raised the question whether the rela- tion between Christ’s Divine Sonship and the motherhood of Mary is real or merely logical.?" 86 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 35, pp. 61 sqq. art. 5; Suarez, De Myst. Vitae 87 On this subtle: problem cfr. St. Christi, disp. 12, sect. 2. 14 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD Christ’s relation as a man to His human mother is no doubt as real as Mary’s relation to her Divine Son. Christ’s relation as Son of God or Logos to His human mother, on the other hand, is purely logical, because, as a self-existing and absolutely independent Being, God cannot stand in any real relation toa creature. Hence St. Thomas teaches: “From the temporal birth there arises no real, but only a logical sonship, though Christ is really the Son of the Virgin. God is really the Lord of His creatures, despite the fact that His dominion over them is no real relation. He is called Lord in a real sense, be- cause of the real power which He exercises. Similarly Christ is in a real sense the Son of the Virgin, because of His real birth from her.” 38 88'Ouodlib., | IX; * art..c4,) jadi “Ex nativitate temporali non in- vealis; dicitur enim realiter Domi- nus propter realem potestatem, et nascitur filiatio realis, sed rationis tantum, quamvis Christus realiter sit filius virginis; sicut Deus reali- ter est Dominus creaturae, quam- vis in eo dominium non sit relatio sic dicitur Christus realiter filius virginis propter realem nativitatem.” Cfr. G. B. Tepe, Institutiones The- ologicae, Vol. III, pp. 683 sqq., Paris 1896, § CHAPTER II MARY'S DIGNITY AS MOTHER OF GOD AND THE GRACES ATTACHED TO HER DIVINE MOTHERHOOD Like the Hypostatic Union of the two Natures in Christ, the Divine Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary may be regarded from a twofold point of view: (1) ontologically, 7. e., in its objective dignity (dignitas maternitatis divinae in se); and (2) ethically, in its causal connexion with the prerogatives proper to this exalted office (plenitudo gratiae correspondens digni- tati). Christology shows how the Hypostatic Union immediately and substantially sanctified the manhood of our Lord in direct proportion to His infinite dignity as Godman.t' In a similar though not precisely the same manner Mary’s objective dignity as mother of God con- stitutes both the intrinsic principle and the extrinsic standard of her supernatural purity and holiness. The one postulates the other as a cause its effect. 1Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, pp. 224 sqq. 5 SECTION 1 THE OBJECTIVE DIGNITY OF MARY'S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD Scheeben? lucidly demonstrates the unique dignity of Mary’s Divine Motherhood by point- ing out, (1) that it confers upon her a rank vastly superior to that of any other creature; (2) that it constitutes her the very centre of the hierarchy of rational creatures, and (3) that it makes her an intermediary between God and the universe. 1. THE TRANSCENDENT RANK OF Mary As MorTHer oF Gop.—The Blessed Virgin Mary, as Mother of God, ranks high above all other crea- tures; in fact she is in a category all her own, in- asmuch as she embodies the most perfect type of created personality, just as the manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ represents the most perfect type of human nature. a) As mother of the Divine Logos, Mary stands in a unique relation to the Second Per- son of the Trinity. The Logos is the true Son both of His Heavenly Father and of His earthly mother. This double consubstantiality (oHo0vcie) , 2 Dogmatik, Vol. III, § 277. 16 DIGNITY OF DIVINE MOTHERHOOD © 17 based upon His twofold birth, is strongly em-_ phasized in the ancient creeds and conciliar defini- tions. The so-called Athanasian Creed* teaches: “ For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man: God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds ; and man, of the substance of His mother, born into the world.”* And the Fifth Ecumenical Council (A. D. 553) defines: “If any one do not confess that the Word of God has two births, the one before the worlds from the Father, out of time and incorporeally, and the other ... from the holy and glorious Deipara and ever Virgin Mary, ... let him be anathema.” ® The dignity of Mary’s maternal relation to the Second Person of the Trinity cannot be adequately expressed in human terms. The Fathers try to explain it by applying to her certain passages of the Psalms,® wherein the beau- ties of the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple of Solomon, and the great City of Zion are described in exalted terms. In fact they regard the Ark of Noé, the Ark of the Cove- nant, the Golden Bowl, etc., as types of the Blessed Virgin.* 8 This creed, known also from its natus.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. first word as the Symbolum Qui- 40.) cunque, is an admirable résumé 5“ St quis non confitetur, Det of the doctrine of St. Athanasius, Verbit duas esse nativitates (ras but is not his work. It is of Western origin, and was written in Spain, against Priscillianism. Cfr. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, p. Dane 4“ Est ergo fides recta, ut creda- mus et confiteamur, quia D. N. Tesus Christus Dei Filius Deus et homo est: Deus est ex substantia Patris ante saecula geniius, et homo est ex substantia matris in saeculo d0o yevyjoes), unam quidem ante saecula ex Patre sine tempore in- corporaliter, alteram vero. ... de sancta gloriosa Dei genitrice (@eo- to6kov) et semper virgine Maria, ... talis anathema sit.” (Denzin- ger-Bannwart, n. 214.) ~ Gish, No DI, We Os enoles Ven SeISC es LXXXV1I,. 1 saa; ete. 7 On these types cfr. the first of St. John Damascene’s Homilies on 18 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD b) Mary’s Divine Motherhood entails an alto- gether unique relation to the First Person of the Trinity. She can claim one and the same ,son with God the Father, not, of course in the heathen sense, as god and goddess, but in the Christian sense, as the Divine Father and a hu- man mother. This miraculous relationship on the part of Mary may be technically described as her daughterhood. It forms the theological counterpart of her motherhood and is a preroga- tive peculiar to Our Lady, resulting in a special kind of adoption. God the Father cannot but look with unalloyed pleasure upon the mother of His Divine Son. She is His adopted daughter (flia adoptiva), who excels all His other adopted chil- dren by right of primogeniture. On this prerogative are based Mary’s sublime titles of “Lady” (Domina, xvpia) and “Queen” (regina Bacitea). St. John of Damascus observes that ‘ in be- coming the mother of the Creator she became the mis- tress of all His creatures.” * To emphasize this aspect of her dignity some Fathers and medieval theologians apply to Mary, though not of course in a strict sense, cer- tain epithets ascribed to the sapientia ingenita by the Sapi- ential Books of the Old Testament. The Church has in- corporated a number of these into her liturgy.® c) Mary’s relationship extends also to the the “Dormitio” (eis thy Kolun- Jesus in Holy Scripture, pp. 12 ow) of the Blessed Virgin (Migne, sqq. New York 10913. P... G., XCVI,. 609 “saq.).: On-the 8 De Fide Orthod., IV, 14. rationale of Marian typology see 9For further particulars see Schaefer-Brossart, The Mother of Schaefer-Brossart, J. c., pp. 102 Sqq., DIGNITY OF DIVINE MOTHERHOOD © 19 Holy Ghost, because He is the product of the joint spiration of the Father and the Son.%° In this capacity she has been aptly compared to a spouse,—an analogy adumbrated by the Apostles’ Creed when it says that Christ ‘was conceived by the Holy Ghost.” This appropriation ex- cludes the cooperation of a human male and rep- resents the fruit of Mary’s womb as a supernatu- ral product." Catholic theologians and the Church in her liturgy illus- trate this sublime relation between the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Ghost by quotations from the Canticle of Can- ticles. The “ Spouse ” is sometimes explained to be Mary, sometimes the Church, and sometimes the human soul.” Thus we have seen that Mary is the mother of the Divine Logos, the daughter of God the Father, and the spouse of the Holy Ghost. What mortal mind can form an adequate conception of this threefold dignity? Need we wonder that some ecclesiastical writers exalt it as ineffable and compare it with the inscrutability of the Al- mighty Himself? Thus Bishop Basil of Seleucia (d. about 459) says in one of his sermons: “As It is impossible to conceive and utter God, so the stupendous mystery of the mother of God tran- scends every intellect and tongue.’’” 10 Cfr, Pohle-Preuss, The Divine § 18, Munster 1876; H. -Zschokke, Trinity, 2nd ed., pp. 168 sqq., St. Die biblischen Frauen im Alten Louis 1915. } Testamente, § 41, Wien 1882. 11 Semen divinum. 13 The passage occurs in the 12 Cfr. B. Schafer, Das Hohelied, thirty-third of the Sermons ()\éyos) 20 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD This sublime dignity is not a quality, but a rela- tion, and as such may be termed infinite; for infini- tude, applied to dignity, does not involve infinity of person. Albertus Magnus teaches: “The Son en- dows with infinity the goodness of His mother; if the fruit is infinitely good, the tree too must in a sense possess some infinite goodness.”** And his great pupil St. Thomas Aquinas says: “ From the fact that she is the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin has a certain infinite dignity, derived from the infinite Good who is God, and on this account there cannot be anything better, just as there cannot be anything better than God.” * Our Lady’s infinite dignity must not, however, be conceived as separable from her character as God’s favorite daughter with its claim to a corresponding meas~- ure of grace and glory. Without this character the dig- nity of divine motherhood would remain in a sense im- perfect. It was for this reason no doubt that our Divine Lord answered the woman who exclaimed: “ Blessed is the womb that bore thee,” by saying: “ Yea, rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep ite 2. Mary’s RELATION TO Her FELLOW-CREA- TURES.—Lhe Blessed Virgin Mary is the most eminent member of the human family. With the ascribed to Basil. For a sketch of just as there can be nothing better his life see Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, pp. 531 sq. 14“ Filius infinitat matris bonita- tem, infinita bonitas in fructu infi nitam quandam adhuc ostendit in arbore bonitatem.”’ (Mariale, qu. 197.) 15 That is to say, there can be no greater motherhood than Mary’s, than God. Summa Theol., 1a, qu. 25, art. 6, ad 4: “ Beata Virgo ex hoc, quod est mater Dei, habet quandam dignitatem infinitam ex bono infinito, quod est Deus, et ex hac parte non potest aliquid melius fieri, sicué non potest aliquid melius esse Deo.” 16 Luke X°, 27 sq. DIGNITY OF DIVINE MOTHERHOOD 21 sole exception of her Divine Son, (“the first-born — of every creature,’ with whom, of course, she cannot be compared either from this or any other point of view), she is undoubtedly the love- liest flower that ever bloomed on the tree of humanity, and we are perfectly justified in ad- dressing her as “Mystic Rose’ and “Spiritual Lily.’ We show a still profounder conception of her dignity and mission when we venerate her as the human organ specially chosen by the Holy Ghost for the miracle of the Incarnation, whereby she became a most precious “Spiritual Vessel,” for, as we pray in the Ave Maria: “Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” How are we to define Mary’s relationship to her fellow- creatures ? She is not, of course, the “head” of the human race. That dignity belongs solely to Jesus Christ, the “ second Adam,” who restored our lost innocence. Mary gave birth to her own spiritual and supernatural head in the person of Christ. Her unique position in the mystic body of the Church has been likened to that of the “neck,” 17 but she is perhaps more appropriately com- pared to the heart, which of all the bodily organs most perfectly reflects the energy of the head and most effect- ively sustains its vital functions.16 Thus Mary’s Divine Motherhood takes on the character and functions of a spiritual motherhood in relation to all men, especially those who are living members of the body of Christ. 17 “‘ Collum corporis mystici.” 18 Cfr. Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. III, p. 512. 22 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD As St. Augustine beautifully says: “ [She is] spiritually the mother not indeed of our Head, 7. e., the Saviour Himself, from whom rather she is spiritually born .. . but [the spiritual mother] of His members, 7. e., ourselves, be- cause she cooperated in love towards the birth of faith- ful [Christians] in the Church who are the members of that Head; bodily she is truly the mother of that Head.” Some of the Fathers describe Mary’s mystic relation to the human race by referring to her as a root (radix) or vine (vitis),—two analogies which, of course, in an infinitely higher sense apply to our Lord Himself. 3. Mary As AN INTERMEDIARY BETWEEN GoD AND THE Wortp.—Like her Divine Son, though not in the same sense, Mary is an intermediary between God and His creatures. Christ’s medi- atorship is based on the Hypostatic Union of the two Natures in one Person; that of the Blessed Virgin depends entirely on her Divine Mother- hood. Hers is therefore a participated and secon- dary mediatorship (mediatio participata s. secun- daria), which derives its essence and effectiveness solely from the grace of Christ; furthermore, it is not an end in itself, but merely a means to an end. Many Fathers and theologians compare the mediator- ship of Mary to the ladder which Jacob beheld in his dream, “standing upon the earth, and the top thereof 19 “ Et mater quidem spiritu non operata est caritate ut fideles in Capitis nostri, quod est ipse Salva- ecclesia mnascerentur, quae illius tor, ex quo magis illa spiritaliter Capitis membra sunt: corpore vero nata est,...sed plane membro- ipsius Capitis mater.” (De Virg., rum eius, quod nos sumus, quia co- cc 6.) DIGNITY OF DIVINE MOTHERHOOD = 23 touching heaven.” 2° She is the ladder by which the Son ~ of God descended from, and by which men ascend to heaven.2?. Other favorite Patristic metaphors are a ring (annulus) and a bridge (pons) restoring the lost connection of mankind with God. St. Proclus (+ 466) combined all these similes in an enthusiastic eulogy. “Mary, I say, maiden and mother, virgin and heaven, the singular bridge between God and men, the astonishing weaver’s beam of humanity, on which in an ineffable manner was woven the garment of that [Hypostatic] Union, the Holy Ghost Himself being the weaver, the connecting thread the power from above, the wool that ancient fleece of Adam, the woof the immaculate flesh taken from the Virgin, the shuttle the immeasurable grace of the bearer, the artist the Logos, entering through her hearing.” *° The objection that these prerogatives are not all ex- pressly enumerated in Holy Scripture is met partly by ref- erence to certain Old Testament texts and types, and partly by the statement that the dignity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is sufficiently indicated in the pregnant passage: “From her was born Jesus, who is called the Christ.” *° 20 Gen. XXVIII, 12 sq. Die Marienverehrung in den ersten 21 Cfr. Zschokke, Die biblischen Jahrhunderten, 2nd ed., pp. 213 sd4q., Frauen, p. 448. Stuttgart 1886. 22 Orat. de Laud. S. Mariae, 1. 23, .. ex qua natus est Iesus, (Migne, P. G., LXV, 679 saa.) qui vocatur Christus.’ (Matth. For further details consult Lehner, I, 16). SECTION #2 MARY’S FULNESS OF GRACE Ripalda* and Scheeben? refer to Mary’s Divine Motherhood as her immediate forma sanctificans. This view is based on a misapplied analogy with the Hyposta- tic Union and therefore untenable. But there can be no doubt that the dignity of Divine Motherhood imperatively postulates for its bearer the highest possible measure of interior grace and_ sanctification. For, though motherhood is merely a grace of vocation (gratia gratis data), its inherent dignity requires a corresponding worthiness on the part of the bearer. The mother of God could not have been a sinful woman. This reason- ing finds strong support in Holy Scripture and Tradition. I. [THE Docmatic ArGUMENT.—Both Holy Scripture and Tradition teach that the Mother of Jesus was “full of grace.” a) The dogma of our Lady’s “plenitudo gra- tiae’ 1s formally contained in the angelic saluta- tion: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” * In the original Greek this text is even more graphic: “xaipe, KexXapitopevy, 6 Kupios’ pera 99 gov,” The emphasis is on the word kexaputopém, 1 De Ente Supernaturali, disp. 70. 8Luke I; 28: °“ Ave. gratia 2Dogmatik, Vol. III, § 276. plena: Dominus tecum.” 24 MARY’S FULNESS OF GRACE 25 which is evidently intended to point out a predom- inant trait of the Virgin. That the salutation was quite extraordinary appears from the fact that Mary was “troubled” at the Angel’s words and “thought with herself what manner of salu- tation this should be.” 4 In its primitive sense yapuréw means J show grace or favor. God’s way of showing favor to a rational creature is to endow him or her with sanctifying srace.""Cir. Eph. I, 6: . “rs Xapitos avrov, év 7) éxapitwoev jpas—of his grace, in which he hath graced us...” Hence xexapuronémm means a woman full of grace,— endowed not merely with the extrinsic graces proper to her state of life, but with a full measure of sanctifying grace, which precedes the grace of voca- tion, strictly so called, by way of preparation and endow- ment. Mary was not yet de facto the Mother of God when the Angel addressed her as kexapitwpevn, for she had not yet given her consent. The phrase: “The Lord is with thee,” is not part of the salutation proper; it is a statement, couched in ordinary Scrip- tural terms, promising her the divine protection for some definite task or mission. But as divine motherhood is con- ditioned upon intrinsic purity and holiness, and presup- poses in its bearer many actual graces, the phrase “ Do- minus tecum” in this connection manifestly has the same meaning as “ gratia plena.,” Bia Following the lead of certain Fathers, we may more- over apply to the Blessed Virgin Mary a large number of Old Testament texts which find their full application in no one else but her. For example, Prov. XXXI, 29: 4Luke I, 29. 26 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD “Many daughters have gathered together riches: thou hast surpassed them all.” The enthusiastic description of the “ Spouse” in the Canticle of Canticles can likewise be applied in its plenary sense only to the Mother of God.® b) The Fathers delighted in unfolding the log- ical implications of the Angelic Salutation and in so doing measured the intrinsic graces of Mary by the standard of her sublime dignity as Mother of God. St. Epiphanius says that she was “full of grace in every respect.” ® St. Athanasius, that she is called “ full of grace, because, being filled with the Holy Ghost, she overflowed with all graces, and was overshadowed by the power of the Most High.” * Inan ancient homily wrongly ascribed to St. Gregory the Wonder-worker we read: “The most holy Virgin is truly the precious ark which received the whole treasure of sanctity.” § Other Patristic texts are even more convincing. We refer the student especially to those which, in connexion with Ps. XLIV, 12,° declare that Mary attracted the Son of the Heavenly King by her extraordinary beauty and holiness. It will suffice to quote St. Augustine, who says: “An abundance of grace was conferred on her, who merited to conceive and bear Him of whom we know that He was without sin.” 1° Our Lady’s personal merit must not, however, be 5 Cfr. Schaefer-Brossart, The 9 Ps, XLV, (12: 05" The | King Mother of Jesus in Holy Scripture, PP. 133 saqq.; Otto Bardenhewer, Maria V erkiindigung, Freiburg 1905. 6 Haer., 58, n. 24. 7 Ep. ad Epictet. 8 Migne, .P. G.,.X, 1150. shall greatly desire thy beauty.” 10 De Natura et Gratia, c. 36: “Plus gratiae ei collatum est, quia eum concipere meruit et parere, quem scimus nullum habuisse pec- catum.” MARY’S FULNESS OF GRACE 27 conceived as a meritum de condigno but merely de con- gruo. In the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘“ The Blessed Virgin is said to have merited the privilege of bearing the Lord of all, not because it was through her merits that He became incarnate, but because, by the grace bestowed upon her she merited that measure of purity and holiness which fitted her to be the mother of God,” c) The theological argument for our dogma is based partly on the self-evident truth that the grace bestowed upon any person is commensurate with his or her dignity or office, and partly on the consideration that the measure of interior graces with which our Lady was dowered must have corresponded to her triple relationship to the three Persons of the Divine Trinity.” It was a duty of honor, so to speak, for the Most Holy Trinity to endow the Deipara with a full, nay with a superabundant measure of interior grace. “The more closely one approaches a principle of any kind,” says St. Thomas, “the more one participates in the effect flowing from that principle. . . . Now Christ is the principle of grace; as God He is its author, as man its instrument... . But the Blessed Virgin Mary was nearest to Christ in His humanity, because He assumed His human nature from her. Consequently, she must have received from Him a greater fulness of grace than any one else.” ** This truth is emphasized in the dog- 11 Summa Theol., 3a, qu. Dares illum puritatis et sanctitatis gradum, 11, ad 3: “Beata virgo dicitur ut congrue posset esse mater Dei.’’ meruisse portare Dominum omnium, 12 V. supra, Section 1. non quia meruit ipsum incarnari, 13 Summa Theol., 3a, qu. amecart, sed quia meruit ex gratia sibi data 5: “Quanto aliquid magis appro- 3 28 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD matic Bull “Jneffabilis Deus” of Pope Pius IX (Dec. 8th, 1854) +4 2. THEOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE DocMa.— We now proceed to consider the dogma from the specifically theological standpoint by studying (a) its scope and (b) its limitations. a) Grace, generally speaking, culminates in. sanctifying grace. Hence the fulness of grace enjoyed by the Blessed Virgin Mary must be con- ceived as a superabundance of interior holiness. How is her sanctity to be measured in the concrete? In trying to estimate it at its proper worth, let us compare the Mother of God, first to her Divine Son, and secondly to the Angels and Saints. Her sanctity was inferior to the created sanctity of Jesus in proportion as divine motherhood falls short of the prerogative of the Hypostatic Union. In comparing her sanctity to that of the Angels and Saints, we shall find it difficult to establish a definite line of demarcation. No doubt the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, while vastly inferior to the created sanctity of Christ, surpasses that of the most glorious seraph and the greatest Saints. The epithet “ full of grace” has a different meaning as pinquat principio in aliquo genere, prae caeteris maiorem debut a tanto magis participat effectum 1l- Christo gratiae plenitudinem ob- lius principii. ... Christus autem tinere.” est principium gratiae, secundum 14 An almost complete transla- divinitatem quidem auctoritative, se- cundum humanitatem vero instru- mentaliter. ... Beata autem virgo Maria propinquissima Christo futt- secundum humanitatem, quia ex ea accepit humanam naturam. Et ideo tion of this Bull will be found in the Marquess of Bute’s English edition of the Roman Breviary, Office for the Octave of the Im- maculate Conception. See also The Little Book of the Immac. Con- ception, Dublin 1913. MARY’S FULNESS OF GRACE 29 applied by Sacred Scripture (1) to our Lord Himself,5 (2) to St. Stephen,** (3) to the Apostles,” and (4) to our Blessed Lady. Though infinitely below the God- man, yet as Mother of God, Mary ranks high above her fellow creatures. Analogously, her plenitudo gratiae is intermediate between the fulness of grace peculiar to Christ and that of the holy Angels and Saints, far out- ranking the latter. Theologians are wont to describe it as “plenitudo summae abundantiae;’ or “ plenitudo redundantiae,’ but they deny that it is actually in- finite, since not even the created sanctity of our Lord Him- self can be conceived as gratia actu infinita® To obtain some idea of the high degree of sanctifying grace peculiar to our Lady, we may assume with Suarez that it transcends by far the combined sanctity of all the Angels and Saints.?° What is true of sanctifying grace, must, mutatis mu- tandis, also be true of its supernatural effects, such as the theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the infused moral virtues, with the sole exception of contri- tion, which our Blessed Mother cannot have exercised because she was sinless. b) The Schoolmen reduced the truths we have just set forth to a technical axiom, to wit: “Alii ad mensuram gratiam acceperunt, Maria autem gratiae plenitudinem.” Being liable to exagger- 19 Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 18, sect. 4, n. 8: “St mente concipiamus ex multitudine gratia- a5 Cire obny: Tin was xdpiros Kal addnOelas. 16 Acts VI, 8: Srédavos 6§é mAnpNS wANPNS Xapcros. 17 Cfr, Acts II, 4: ésdhodnoar mavres mvevmaTos ayiov. 18 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, Pp. 230 sqq. rum sanctorum (et angelorum) om- nium unam intentissimam gratiam consurgere, non adaequaret inten- sionem gratiae Virginis.’ 30 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD ation, however, this axiom must be carefully cir- cumscribed. a) First, the plenitudo gratiarum does not mean that all possible supernatural prerogatives are superadded to sanctifying grace and its con- comitant privileges. Those who are guilty of this exaggeration (we are sorry to see Terrien among their number) are com- pelled to attribute to Mary all the prerogatives en- joyed by our First Parents in Paradise, viz.: bodily im- mortality, impassibility, and an infused knowledge of all natural truths. This theory is refuted by the tribulations which our Blessed Lady suffered and by the fact that she died a natural death. A seventeenth-century divine, Christopher Vega, as- serted that the soul of our Lady enjoyed the beatific vision of God throughout life.2° If this were true, the Blessed Virgin could not have acquired any earthly merits by faith, and Elizabeth would have been mistaken when she said to her: “Blessed art thou that hast believed.” 2. At most we may adopt the pious, though unproved and unprovable opinion of Suarez,” that Mary had a fleeting vision of the Blessed Trinity at the moment when she conceived, and again when she gave birth to her Divine Son. St. Alphonsus de’ Liguori held, and his opinion has found a recent defender in Fr. Terrien, that the Blessed Virgin enjoyed full consciousness and the use of reason from the moment of her conception. This assump- tion (which, by the way, dates back no farther than the 20 Theologia Mariana, Lugduni 22 De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 1653. 19, sect, 4, Nn. 2. 21 Luke I, 45. MARY’S FULNESS OF GRACE 31 fourteenth century), is utterly untenable. Not even the shred of an argument can be produced in its favor. St. Thomas expressly declares that Mary did not have the use of free-will while in her mother’s womb but that this was the unique privilege of Christ.?° Equally untenable is the more recent assertion of Jean- jacquot ** that the Blessed Virgin during her earthly life knew personally—as she now knows in Heaven —all those pious souls who in course of time would have recourse to her as the “ Help of Christians.” It is, however, perfectly consonant with her dignity as Deipara to hold that Mary possessed a deep and exten- sive supernatural knowledge in matters of faith,— so wide and profound in fact, that she deserves to be called “Seat of Wisdom.” Note, however, that, as applied to her in the liturgy, this epithet does not necessarily mean anything more than that our Lady is the bearer and mother of the increate Wisdom of the Logos, and that, consequently, we are not justified, on the strength of mere a-priori deductions, in ascribing to Mary in the way- faring state an altogether singular knowledge of the di- vine mysteries and an infused familiarity with the wisdom of Sacred Scripture. The question she addressed to the Archangel Gabriel proves that she was unaware of the mystery of the Incarnation; for, as “the handmaid of the Lord” she makes an humble profession of faith. That her earthly life was one of faith, is evidenced also by the prophecy of Simeon? and by the reply she got from her twelve-year-old Son in the Temple, and which 23 Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 27, art. defended by Gerson and Muratori. 3: “Non statim habuit usum li- 24 Simples Explications sur la Co beri arbitrit adhuc in ventre matris opération de la S. Viérge a VOeuvre existens; hoc enim est speciale pri- de la Rédemption, Paris 1875. vilegium Christi.” This view was 25 Luke II, 29 saq. 2 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD she believingly treasured in her heart.2* To assume that she was versed in the natural sciences or that her “wisdom” equalled the “infused knowledge” of the Angels, is unwarranted. Unlike her Divine Son, the humble “handmaid of the Lord” was not skilled in profane knowledge, nor did her exalted mission necessi- tate any intellectual attainments beyond those which strictly belong to the supernatural order. While Mary, especially after she had “ conceived of the Holy Ghost,” undoubtedly enjoyed to an exalted degree the gift of contemplation, Scheeben exaggerates when he says that she lived in a continuous ecstasy uninterrupted even by sleep.*’ It is difficult to see the object of such mystical extravagances. Did the plenitudo gratiae with which our Lady was en- dowed comprise such free and special graces as the power conferred by the Sacrament of Holy Orders? No; our Lord gave this and similar powers (spiritual jurisdiction, etc.), to St. Peter and the other Apostles, not to His mother. The same limitation applies to all other func- tions proper to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. However, there is nothing to prevent us from assuming that after the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost day the Blessed Virgin Mary possessed the threefold gift of prophecy, tongues, and miracles in a measure corres- ponding to her eminent position in the primitive Church.?8 26 Luke II, 49 sqq. 27 Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. III, §278. bat miracula facere. Propter quod etiam de Ioanne Baptista dicitur quod ‘signum fecit nullum’ (lo. 28 St. Thomas denies that she pos- sessed the gift of working miracles: ““Miraculorum autem usus ei non competebat, dum viveret, quia tunc temporis confirmanda erat doctrina Christi miraculis. Et ideo soli Christo et eius discipulis, qui erant baiuli doctrinae Christi, convenie- X, 41), ut scil. omnes Christo in- tenderent. Usum autem prophetiae habuit [B. Virgo], ut patet in Can- tico quod fecit: ‘ Magnificat anima mea Dominum,’ etc. (Luc. I, 47).” (Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 27, art. 5, ad 3.) MARY’S FULNESS OF GRACE 33 B) The “fulness of grace’ enjoyed by our. Blessed Mother was not complete and perfect at. the outset, but developed gradually, reaching its climax at the moment of her death. Unlike her Divine Son,?? Mary advanced in grace and virtue. Catholic theologians distinguish three stages in her spiritual development. The first of these comprises her infancy up to the time when she conceived our Divine Lord. The second coincides with the period from the conception of Christ to her death. The third is the term of her everlasting beatitude in Heaven.*® It should be noted, however, that St. Thomas erred in representing the perfectio sanctificationis characteristic of the first stage as liberatio a culpa originali; it must be defined as praeservatio a culpa originali, as we shall demonstrate further on. Some few theologians hold that Mary attained to per- fection of grace at the end of the first stage, 7. e., when she conceived her Divine Son. But this theory entails an inadmissible corollary, namely, that she received no increase of sanctifying grace after the Incarnation, neither ex opere operato, as during the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost day, nor ex opere operantis, e. g. by the merits of her virtuous life. Who would admit such an incongruity? The honor of our Lady is not enhanced by untrue, unprovable, and questionable asseverations, no matter how well-intentioned the zeal 29 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, veddebatur idonea ut esset mater pp. 236 sqq. Christi, et haec fuit perfectio sanc- 30 Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa The- tificationis. Secunda autem per- OLOGICEs Bay a Aa 2 7) ates 5s. ads 25 fectio gratiae fuit in beata virgine “ Et similiter in beata virgine est ex praesentia Filii Dei in eius utero triplex perfectio gratiae: prima qui- incarnati. Tertia autem est per- dem quasi dispositiva, per quam fectio finis, quam habet in gloria.” 34 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD of those who put them forth. She is so very great and holy that there is no need of exaggerating the graces with which she was endowed. 3. THE Name “Mary.”’—To derive the dogma etymologically from the name “Mary” is a rather difficult undertaking, as the root-meaning of the word remains doubtful. The word “ Mary ” (DD, Aramaic O°, Septuagint Mopidu) is genuinely Hebraic. The first woman who bore it in Bible history is the sister of Moses. Lauth’s attempt to derive the word from the Egyptian has proved a failure. The Aramaic etymon signifies “Lady ” (Do- mina, from 12, Lord). According to the various He- brew words that have been assigned as its root, the word may have any one of a variety of meanings. First, illu- minatrix (dwrifovea from “iN, light-bearer). Then, the stubborn, refractory one (from 7%, to be stubborn). It is not likely that a father would give his new-born daughter either of these fantastic names. As regards the other proposed derivations, myrrh (myrrha, pvppa 3 Heb. 49), which is both ancient and popular, will hardly be displaced by Bardenhewer’s *! more recent and rather prosaic interpretation of the corpulent one (from N19, to fatten).®? Akin to this derivation is an older but nobler one, i. ¢., the strong, the tall. The final syllable iam is usually treated as the suffix characteristic of Hebrew adjectives and abstract nouns, though some interpret it substantively and explain Miriam to mean the bitter sea (mare amarum, mpi Oddacca, from 10, bitter, and D, sea) or a drop of the sea, (stilla maris, from 2, drop, 81 Cfr. Otto Bardenhewer, Der 32 Corpulency is said to be an Name Maria. Freiburg 1895. attribute of beauty in the Orient. MARY’S FULNESS OF GRACE 35 and 6%, sea).** On purely linguistic grounds “ Mary” may also be derived from Marjam, i. e., the bitter, or, figuratively, the sorrowful one (amara, afilicta). Since the etymological derivation of the name is, and most likely will always remain doubtful, its typical and historic interpretation deserves all the more attention. “Mirjam [7 e., the sister of Moses as a type of the mother of God] was the Israelite; Mary —as the anti- thesis between herself and Eve shows — is the Christian. Mirjam was par excellence ‘she who had been healed’ [of leprosy] in the Old Testament, an earnest of God’s fidelity in keeping His promises; Mary is preéminently “she who has been redeemed,’ the token of salvation. As a member of the human race, a child of Adam, Mary, like the rest of us, had need of being redeemed. Had not our Lord in a most unique manner become her Redeemer, she too would have been overwhelmed by the bitter flood of original sin. ... But as the old Testa- ment Mirjam was preéminently the one who had been healed, so the New Testament Mary is preéminently the one who has been endowed with grace. It is for this reason that the Angel reassured her [Luke I, 30]: ‘Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace (xépw) with Croc 14 READINGS: —*P. Canisius, S. J., De Maria Virgine Incompa- rabilt et Det Genitrice, Ingolstadt 1577 (reprinted in Migne, Summa Aurea de Laudibus B. V. Mariae, Paris 1866).— G. Ven- tura, S. J., La Madre di Dio Madre degli Uomini, 2nd ed., Rome 838 The popular title ‘ Stella ther information see Knabenbauer, maris’’ (star of the sea) is a cor- | Comment. in Matth., Vol. I, pp. rupted reading of stilla maris. It 43 sqq., Paris 1892; Bucceroni, goes‘back to the time of St. Jerome. Commentarii, 4th ed., pp. 80 sqq.; 34 Al, Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter Bardenhewer, Der Name Maria. in der Hl. Schrift, pp. 142 sqq., Geschichte der Deutung desselben, 2nd ed., Miinster 1900. English tr. Freiburg 1895; Minocchi, IJ] Nome by Bishop Brossart, p. 149. For fur- di Maria, Florence 1897. 360 MARY’S DIVINE MOTHERHOOD 1845.— F. Morgott, Die Mariologie des hl. Thomas von Aquin, Freiburg 1878.— Chr. Stamm, Mariologia seu Potiores de S. Det- para Quaestiones ex SS. Patrum ac Theologorum Mente Pro- positae, Paderborn 1881.— A. Kurz, Mariologie oder Lehre der katholischen Kirche iiber Maria, Ratisbon 1881—L. M. Worn- hart, Maria, die wunderbare Mutter Gottes und der Menschen, Innsbruck 1890..—C. H. T. Jamar, Theologia Mariana, Louvain 1896.— Th. E. Bridgett, C. SS. R., Our Lady’s Dowry, London 1875.— J. Bucceroni, Commentarit ... de B. V. Maria, 4th ed., Rome 1896.—*Aloys Schaefer, Die Gottesmutier in der Hl. Schrift, 2nd ed., Minster 1900; English translation by F. Brossart, The Mother of Jesus in Holy Scripture, New York 1913.—J. B. Terrien, S. J., La Mére de Dieu et la Mere des Hommes d’apres les Péres et la Théologie, 4 vols., Paris 1900 sqq.—A. M. Lépicier, Tractatus de B. Maria Virgine Matre Dei, Rome 1901. — Th. Livius, C. SS. R., The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries, London 1893. E. Neubert, Marie dans VEglise Anténicéenne, Paris 1908.— J. Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. Ill, § 274-282, Freiburg 1882,— Wilhelm-Scannell, 4 Manual of Catholic Theology, Vol. Il, pp. 208 sqq., 2nd ed., London 1901. —S. J. Hunter, S. J., Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, Vol. II, pp. 545 saq., 2nd ed., London s.a.— J. Gibbons, “ The Position of the Blessed Virgin in Catholic Theology” in the Am. Cath. Quarterly Review, Vol. II, No. 12.— J. H. Stewart, The Greater Eve, London 1912.— A. J. Maas, S. J., art. “Virgin Mary” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XV.—G. M. Galfano, La Vergine delle Vergine, Palermo 1882.— Article “Marie” in the Diction- naire Apologétique de la Fou Catholique, Sect. XIII, Paris 1917. —B. J. Otten, S. J.. A Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. I, St. Louis 1917, pp. 74, 133; 146, 150, 166, 216, 311, 390 sq., 398, 4ll, 442 sqq.; Vol. II (1918), pp. 397 saq. The older literature on the subject is given in Maracci’s Bi- bliotheca Mariana, Rome 1648. A copious bibliography will be found in J. Bourassé, Summa Aurea de Laudibus B. Mariae Virgins, 13 vols., Paris 1866 sqq. and in G. Kolb, S. J.. Wegweiser in die Marianische Literatur, and ed., Freiburg 1905. PART II MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES In the first part of this treatise we have explained the teaching of the Catholic Church with regard to the unique dignity of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Deipara or Mother of God (eordxos keyapitwpevy), and the plenitude of grace with which she was endowed. From this fundamental teaching can be deduced by aprioristic reasoning a number of extraordinary and unique prerogatives. However, in determining these pre- rogatives it is advisable to discard the deductive method and to rely entirely on the data furnished by Revelation. Divine Revelation ascribes to our Lady two distinct classes of special prerogatives, one nega- tive, the other positive. Mary’s negative prerogatives consist in the removal, or absence, of all defects and blemishes incompatible with divine motherhood. Her posi- tive prerogatives may be defined as certain special privileges which God conferred upon her with a view to adorn and exalt her in a manner befitting her sublime dignity as Deipara. 37 CHAPTER T THE NEGATIVE PREROGATIVES OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN It is a dogmatic principle that the Mother of God was exempt from every defect or blemish. There are four separate and distinct prerogatives that may be enumerated under this category. They are: (1) Exemption from original sin. This priv- ilege of the Blessed Virgin is known as her Im- maculate Conception. (2) Immunity from personal sin. This pre- rogative is commonly called her sinlessness. (3) Freedom from bodily pollution. It is this privilege we mean when we speak of her as “ever virem.| (4) Exemption from the dominion of death. This privilege is implied in her bodily Assump- tion into Heaven. | The first two of these prerogatives have exclu- sive reference to the soul of our Blessed Lady; the third and fourth also include her body. We will discuss them one by one in four distinct Sections. 38 SECTION st MARY’S IMMACULATE CONCEPTION I. STATE OF THE QUESTION AND MEANING OF THE Docma.—a) Conception (conceptio) may be taken either actively or passively. Active conception (concipere, conceptio ac- tiva) is the parental act of generation. Pas- sive conception (concipi, conceptio passiva) 1s the origin of a human being in the maternal womb. A child comes into being at the moment when the intellectual soul is infused into the prod- uct of parental generation (embryo, foetus). In speaking of the Immaculate Conception of the _ Blessed Virgin Mary, therefore, we do not mean the procreative act of her saintly parents (which may or may not have been tainted by inordinate concupiscence), but simply and solely the creative act by which Almighty God infused her immacu- late soul into the corporeal receptacle which had been prepared for it by Joachim and Anna. In other words, by a most extraordinary privilege the soul of our Lady was from the first instant of her existence preserved from all stain of original sin. b) The fact that Mary was preserved trom ens 40 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES original sin does not necessarily imply that she was exempt from the universal necessity or need of being subject to it (debitum peccati originalis ). Theologians generally hold that, though she was de facto exempt from original sin, Mary incurred the debitum contrahendi, because else her Immaculate Conception would not be an effect of the atonement. We may distinguish a twofold debitum, proximate and remote. Debitum remotum merely signifies member- ship in the human race, based on the ordinary mode of propagation, 7. e., sexual generation. Debitum proxi- mum involves inclusion in the wilful act by which Adam, as the representative of the whole race, rejected the grace of God and implicated human nature in sin. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is sufficiently safeguarded by admitting that Mary was subject to the debitum re- motum. The view of some older Scotist theologians, that she had not even so much as a debitum remotum 1n- currendi peccatum originale, cannot be reconciled with the solemn formula by which Pope Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Is it necessary to admit that there was also a debitum proximum? The majority of Catholic divines, following Suarez, contend that it is. The assumption of such a debitum, involving as it does the exemption of one sole individual from a strictly binding universal law, consti- tutes the Immaculate Conception a miracle and a far higher grace than it would be in the opposite hypothesis ; but it does not sufficiently safeguard the soul of our Lady against the possibility of contamination.’ 1De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. ... de B. Virgine Maria, 4th ed., 3,,,Sect./)2. pp. 65 sqq., Rome 1896. 2Cfr. Bucceroni, Commentaru HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION = 41 c) The dogma expressly says that our Lady owed her freedom from original sin entirely to the redemptive merits of her Divine Son. Like all other human beings, she had need of a re- deemer, though the manner of her redemption differed from that of the common run. She was preserved from original sin by a special and alto- gether unique privilege. As this privilege is based entirely on her dignity as Mother of God, it would be rash to assume that it was granted also to other Saints, e. g., John the Baptist or St. Joseph. Inasmuch as Mary never even for one mo- ment contracted the slightest taint of original sin, theo- logians commonly speak of her redemption as redemptio anticipata or praeredemptio (sometimes also praemunda- tio). This Preredemption, according to Catholic teach- ing, formally consisted in the infusion of sanctifying grace into her soul immediately after its creation. In other words, the sanctification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, like that of our First Parents in Paradise,* was simultaneous with her creation. . d) All these momenta are embodied in the definition enunciated by Pius IX in his famous Bull “/neffabilis Deus,’ of December 8th, 1854: “We define that the doctrine which declares that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and priv- ilege granted to her by Almighty God, through 8Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God the Author of Nature and the Supernat- ural, p. 199, 2nd ed., St. Louis 1916, 42 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES the merits of Christ Jesus, Saviour of mankind, was preserved from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore must be held firmly and constantly by all faithful Chris- tians.” * The Bult not only defines the dogma, but declares that it is “revealed by God.” The subject of this singular privilege is the person of Mary; it has nothing to do with her progenitors. The privilege itself consists in Mary’s actual preservation from original sin through the merits of Jesus Christ. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is rejected by the Anglicans, and by Protestants generally, also by many schismatics and the so-called Old Catholics.’ 2. ProoF FROM SACRED ScCRIPTURE.—The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is not ex- pressly enunciated in Sacred Scripture, but, as Father S. J. Hunter justly observes, “this circum- stance will have no weight against its accept- ance, except with those who assume, without a scrap of reason, that the whole of the revelation given by God is contained in the inspired Books.” ° 4“ Definimus doctrinam, quae terque credendam.” (Denzinger- tenet Beatam Virginem Mariam in Bannwart, n. 1641.) primo instanti suae conceptionts 5 See Edw. Preuss, Zum Lobe der fuisse singulari omnipotentis Det unbefleckten Empbfingnis von Einem, gratia et privilegio, intuitu merito- der sie vormals gelistert hat, Frei- yum Christi Iesu Salvatoris hu- burg 1879 (cfr. Pohle, Lehrbuch der mani generis, ab omni originalis Dogmatik, sth ed. ‘* Vorwort,” culpae labe praeservatam immunem, Paderborn 1912). esse a Deo revelatam atque idcirco 6 Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, ab omnibus fidelibus firmiter constan- Vol.) 11,’ Pe. 853,400) ed. HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 43 The Bull “/neffabilis” cites two important texts, ’ which certainly point to the Blessed Virgin as the recipient of some extraordinary spiritual favor, —a favor which cannot be fully explained by any- thing short of the dogma of her Immaculate Con- ception. True, the exegetical argument from these texts, taken by itself, scarcely exceeds the limits of probability; but the lack of Scriptural evidence can be abundantly supplied from the writings of the Fathers. a) The so-called Protevangelium (Gen. III, 14 sq.) runs as follows: “Et ait Dominus Deus ad serpentem: . . . Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem (781), et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu imsidiaberis cal- caneo eius—And the Lord God said to the ser- pent: ... I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” The Hebrew text has: “he [sin] shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel.” The only difference between the two versions is that, whereas the Vulgate describes “the woman”’ as crushing the serpent, the original Hebrew text, by employing a male pronoun, ascribes this act to “the seed of the woman.” The Septuagint agrees with the Hebrew, rendering the passage as follows: atrés cov rypyoe Kepadyv, Kal ov TNpHTELS airod mrépav, This diversity does not, however, 4 44 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES affect the dogmatic argument, which may be for- mulated thus: According to the wellnigh unanimous inter- pretation of the Fathers, beginning with St. Jus- tin Martyr and St. Ignatius of Antioch, the “‘ser- pent crusher” is a determinate person, namely our Divine Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, and the woman whose enmity is destined to prove fatal to the serpent, is the Blessed Virgin Mary. These two persons are opposed to two other be- ings, vig., the serpent, who is none other than Satan, and his “seed,” 7. e., his clientéle of sin- ners.” God Himself has “put enmity” between these two pairs, Christ and His mother on the one side, and Satan and his followers on the other, —an enmity which will ultimately end in vic- tory for the former and destruction for the latter. Mary, being on the side of Christ, with the same enmity between her and Satan as that which exists between the latter and her Divine Son, must also share in His triumph. This would not be the case had she, even for a single moment, been tainted by original sin; for in that hypothesis Satan would have triumphed over her, and she would have been, at least temporarily, his friend and ally, and the Protogospel would con- sequently be untrue. It follows that, viewed in 7 Cfr. Matth. III, 7; John VIII, Maas, S. J., Christ in Type and 44; Acts XIII, 10; 1 John III, 8. Prophecy, Vol. I, pp. 184 saq., New On the Protevangelium, see A. J. York 1893. HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 45 the light of Christian tradition, the Protevange- lium foreshadows not only the victory achieved by Christ through the atonement, but implicitly also the Immaculate Conception of His Blessed Mother.® b) Leaving the Old Testament, we proceed to consider the Angelic Salutation, Luke I, 28: “Hail, full of grace,” in connection with the words addressed to our Lady by Elizabeth, Luke I, 42: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” ° Gabriel’s greeting rep- resents the divine favor enjoyed by the Blessed Virgin as the highest form of grace consistent with her state, and when Elizabeth, ‘filled with the Holy Ghost,” hailed Mary as the “mother of my Lord,” she did not pronounce a conventional salutation, but wished to say (as the Greek trans- lation &v yevoéiv of a Hebrew superlative plainly in- dicates): ‘Thou art the only blessed one among women, because the “fruit of thy womb’ is the Son of God.” We have shown in a previous chapter that Mary, as the Mother of God, was “full of grace.” She would have lacked the ful- 8 For further information on this Rome 1854; Legnani, De Secunda subject see Palmieri, De Deo Cre- ante et Elevante, thes. 87, Rome 1878; G. B. Tepe, Instit.. Theol., Vol. III, pp. 688 sqq., Paris 1896; Al. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter in der Hi. Schrift, pp. ror sqq., Dp. 116 (Engl. tr., pp. 108 sqq.); Fr. X. Patrizi, De Immaculata Mariae Ori- gine a Deo Praedicta Disquisitio, Eva, Commentarius in Protoevange- lium, Venice 1888; Arendt, S. J., De Protevangelii Habitudine ad Im- maculatam Deiparae Conceptionem, Rome 1904. H 9 evrAoynuevn ov év yuvarkiy, Kat evNoynuevos 6 Kapmos THs KotNlas JOU. 46 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES ness of grace had she not, from the first instant of her existence, been entirely exempt from sin. In other words, her plenitudo gratiae ** must be conceived as unlimited in intensity as well as duration. Rightly, therefore, does Martin Luther remark of our Lady: “ We could not say to her: © Blessed art thou,’ if she had at any time been subject to malediction.”’ ** Thus conceived, the prerogative of plenitudo gratiae as well as the “ blessedness ” of Mary logically include her Immaculate Conception, as a cause includes its effect or an antecedent its consequent. This argument is confirmed by the traditional anti- thesis, so often emphasized by the Fathers and Catholic divines, between Mary and Eve. “ Hail [Mary],’ says Pope Innocent III (d. 1216), “ because through thee the name of Eve is changed. Eve was full of sin, but thou art full of grace; Eve withdrew from God, but God is with thee; Eve was cursed, but thou art blessed among women; through Eve death entered the world, through thee life returned.”12 This antithetical comparison would be meaningless had Mary ever, even for one brief moment, made common cause, as it were, with Adam’s sinful spouse.** 10 V. supra, pp. 24 sqq. 11“ Man kénnte eu thr sprechen: ‘ Gebenedeit bist du,’ wenn sie je unter der Maledeiung gelegen wire.” (Kirchenpostille, 1527.) 12 Innocent III, Sermo de Virg. Purif.: “Ave, quia per te muta- bitur nomen Evae; illa fuit plena peccato, sed tu plena gratia; illa re- nicht cessit a Deo, sed Dominus tecum; illa fuit maledicta in mulieribus, sed tu benedicta; per illam mors in- travit in orbem, sed per te vita rediit ad orbem.” 13 This consideration is beauti- fully developed by Al. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter in der Hl. Schrift, pp. 118 sqq., 123 sdq. (Engl. tr., 113 sqq-) HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 47 3. THE ARGUMENT FROM TRADITION.—The > ecclesiastical tradition of the dogma of the Im- maculate Conception plainly falls into two sepa- rate and distinct stages. The first may be termed that of quiet and undisputed possession. It ex- tends up to the time of the famous controversy which broke out in 1140. The second period is characterized by a gradual clarification of the dogma in the minds of the faithful, and ends with its solemn definition by Pope Pius IX, A. D. 1854. a) During the first period (from about 250 to t100) the Orient, on the whole, gives evidence of a much clearer conception of the dogma than the West, though the Latins no doubt virtually be- lieved in the Immaculate Conception. Perhaps it is not too much to say that, had the Schoolmen following St. Anselm known the writings of the Greek Fathers as well as we know them to-day, they would never have opposed the dogma.™ a) Both the Oriental and the Latin churches held in common, as part of their primitive tradi- tion, two central ideas, in which the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was implicitly contained. These fundamental conceptions were: (1) Mary’s transcendent purity, and (2) the striking contrast between her and Eve, so similar to that existing between Christ and Adam. 14Cfr. Perrone, De Immaculato B. Virginis Mariae Conceptu, P, II, cap. 5, Rome 1847. 48 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES , In regard to the first of these principles, the dogmatic Bull of Pius LX says: “ Atque haec quidem doctrina adeo maiorum mentes animosque occupavit, ut singularis et omnino mirus penes illos invaluerit loquendi usus, quo Deiparam saepissime compellarunt immaculatam, omnique ex parte immacula- tam, innocentem et innocentissimam, illibatam et unde- quaque illibatam, sanctam et ab omni peccati sorde alie- nissimam, totam puram, totam intemeratam ac ipsam prope puritatis et innocentiae formam, pulchritudine pul- chriorem, venustate venustiorem, sanctiorem sanctitate so- lamque sanctam purissimamque anima et corpore, quae supergressa est omnem integritatem et virginitatem, ac sola tota facta est domicilium universarum gratiarum Sanctissimi Spiritus et quae, solo Deo excepto, exstittt cunctis superior et ipsis Cherubim et Seraphim et omni exercitu angelorum naturaé pulchrior, formosior et sanc- tior, cui praedicandae coelestes et terrenae linguae minime sufficiunt.” 1° It is impossible to assume that the early Christians be- lieved Mary to have been subject to original sin, since the Fathers of both the Greek and the Latin Church extol her as “all-holy,” “a virginal paradise preserved from the curse of God,” “a virgin without the slightest taint of sin,” “a miracle of grace, holier and purer than the angels,” etc., etc. No matter how highly we may rate the sanctity of a converted sinner, it would be untrue to say that he is absolutely stainless. For the sins which he has committed never cease to overshadow his life. To compare Mary’s sanctity to the immacu-: late purity of the glorious seraphs, nay, to exalt it in unmeasured terms above that purity, is but one 15 The Patristic texts upon which this eulogy is based may be found in Passaglia and Palmieri, HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 49 remove from the formal declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The dogma may also be logically deduced from the Patristic conception of Mary as the second Eve. As Adam was the counterpart of Christ,’® so Eve was the antithesis of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Or, to express the same truth somewhat differently: As Eve, in conjunction with Adam, embodies the principle of sin, so Mary, in conjunction with Christ, represents the well- spring of sanctity and righteousness. If the Blessed Virgin, as the anti-type of Eve, essentially participates in the sanctity of her Divine Son, she cannot possibly have been tainted by original sin; else the Scriptural par- allel would be meaningless. What renders this deduction even more convincing is the fact that the Fathers, not content with opposing Mary to sinful Eve, put her on a par with our proto- mother while yet in the state of original justice, that is to say, conceived her as equally holy in origin with “ the mother of all the living.” This significant parallel between Eve and our Blessed Lady is found, as a part of the traditional deposit of faith, in the writings of the earliest Fathers and ecclesias- tical writers, beginning with St. Justin Martyr, St. Ire- nzus, and Tertullian, down to St. John of Damascus. We will quote a few characteristic passages. “The First-born of the Father before all creatures,” says St. Justin Martyr, “became a man through the Virgin, that by what way the disobedience arising from the serpent had its beginning, by that way also it might have its undoing. For Eve, being a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that was from the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin Mary, tak- 16 Cfr, Rom. V, 14 sqq. 50 MARY’S SPECIAL .PREROGATIVES ing faith and joy, when the Angel told her the good tidings .. . answered: ‘ Let it be done unto me accord- ing to thy word.’”’*7 This is “truly a most remarkable utterance in the mouth of a writer who flourished in the middle of the second century.” 18 Tertullian '® says: “ For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer of death. Equally into a virgin was to be introduced the Word of God, which was the builder-up of life; that, what by that sex had gone into perdition might by the same sex be brought back to salvation. Eve had believed the Serpent, Mary believed Gabriel; what Eve sinned by faith, Mary atoned bystaithy 7-2 In the East, St. Ephrem Syrus (+ 373) gives expres- sion to a similar thought: “Those two innocent, those two simple women, Mary and Eve, had been indeed cre- ated quite equal, but afterwards one became the cause of our death, the other of our life.’ 74 Theodotus of Ancyra (d. about 445), a friend and fel- low-combatant of St. Cyril of Alexandria, says: “ In- stead of the virgin Eve, who was unto us the instrument 17 Dial. esPryph., c. 100.) The translation is substantially New- brieli; quod illa credendo deliquit, haec credendo delevit.” man’s (“A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on Occa- sion of His Eirenicon,” reprinted in Certain Difficulties Felt by Angli- cuns in Catholic Teaching Con- sidered, Vol. II, p. 33). 180. Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur, Vol. I, p. 236, Freiburg 1902. 19 De Carne Christi, c. 17. “‘In virginem enim adhuc Evam irrepse- rat verbum exstructorium vitae, ut quod per eiusmodi sexum abierat in perditionem, per eundem sexum re- digeretur in salutem. Crediderat Eva serpenti, credidit Maria Ga- 20 Cfr. St. Irenexus, Adv. Haer., EIiDi22,) 430 rogers Cb bes passages translated by Newman, /. c., pp. 34 sq. Cfr. also Bardenhewer, op. cit., Pp. 520 sq.) 21“ Duae innocentes, duae sim- plices, Maria et Eva, sibi quidem prorsus aequales factae erant; post- ea vero altera facta est causa mor- tis, altera vitae nostrae.”’ (Op. Syr., II, 327.) Apposite texts from the liturgy of the Syrian Church will be found apud Holeika, Témoig- nages de VEglise Syto-Maronite en Faveur de VImmaculée Conception, Beirut 1904. HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION $I of death, God, for the purpose of giving life, chose a_ virgin most pleasing to Himself and full of grace, who, included in woman’s sex, was free from woman’s sin, a virgin innocent, without taint, holy in soul and body, asa lily budding in the midst of thorns, unlearned in the evils of Eve,... who was a daughter of Adam, but unlike hin. 24 The same belief inspired St. John of Damascus when he wrote: “ Hail, thou the only blessed one among women, who hast repaired the fall of our first mother Eve... . Hail, thou who art truly full of grace, because thou art holier than the angels and more excellent than the arch-— angels... . Hail, thou full of grace, because thou art more beautiful than the Cherubim and more exalted than the Seraphim. ... Hail, full of grace, thou who art higher than heaven and purer than the sun which we pehold.””:2° B) A careful analysis of these central ideas naturally led to the explicit conclusion that the Blessed Mother of God must have been pure and holy also in her origin. This conclusion, though not formally equivalent to an enunciation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, dif- fered but little if anything from it materially. Its logical development was partly theoretical, by > 22“ Loco virginis Evae, quae no- lia Adam, sed ipsi dissimilis.’ ? bis instrumentum mortis facta est, Deus elegit ad dandam vitam Vir- ginem sibt placentissimam et gratié plenam, quae femina existens ab iniquitate feminae aliena fuit, Vir- ginem innocentem, immaculatam, Sanctam spiritu et corpore, pro- ductam ut lilium inter spinas, quae non novit mala Evae,... quae fuit (Hom. in S. Deiparam, VI, n. 11, apud Gallandi, Bibliotheca Vet. Pa- trum Antiquorumque Script. Eccles., Venice 1765-81, Vol. IX, 475.) 23 Hom. in Annunt. B. M. V., II. For a fuller treatment of this topic see Hurter, Compend. Theol. Dogm., Vol. II, n. 631 sqq., Inns- bruck 1896, 52 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES means of express doctrinal judgments, and partly practical, through the introduction of the festival of the Immaculate Conception. The theoretical development of the dogma is suffi- ciently illustrated by the following quotations. St. Hippolytus (about 220), who was a pupil of St. Ireneus, says: “ The ark which was made of indestruc- tible timber (cfr. Ex. XXV, 10 sqq.), was the Redeemer Himself. The ark symbolized His tent [body], which was impervious to decay and engendered no sinful cor- ruption. ... . The Lord was sinless, because, accord- ing to His humanity, He was fashioned from indestruc- tible wood, i. e., out of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost, lined within and without with the purest gold of the Logos.” 24 Dr. Bardenhewer remarks on this passage: “ This juxtaposition of our Lord and the Virgin as the only sinless representatives of the human race, consti- tutes the characteristic form in which the Immaculate Conception was taught in the early days.” Dionysius the Great of Alexandria (about 250) wrote against Paul of Samosata: “Christ did not live in a servile tent, but in His holy ark... and He preserved His mother as one who was blessed from head to foot, undefiled, even as He alone knew the manner of her con- ception and birth.” *° Our classic witness is again St. Ephrem Syrus (about 370), who represents the Church of Edessa as address- ing the Lord Jesus Christ in these words: ‘‘ Thou and Thy mother are the only [human beings] that are per- 24 Quoted by Theodoret, Dial., 1 Literatur, Vol. II, p. 553, Freiburg (Migne, P. G., X, 863). ; 1903. © 25 Geschichte der altkirchlichen 26 Ep. adv. Paul. Samosat. HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 53 fectly beautiful in every respect; for there is no spot in Thee, O Lord, nor any taint in Thy mother.” ?7 There is an alleged “ Report of the Priests and Dea- cons of Achaia on the Martyrdom of St. Andrew,” 28 which used to be quoted as the most ancient Patristic tes- timony in support of the dogma of the Immaculate Con- ception.*? We know now that this report is probably no older than the fifth century. But even as a document of the fifth century it is not without value. It contains this characteristic passage: “ Because the first man [Adam] was created of undefiled earth [i. ¢., earth which had not yet been cursed], ... it was necessary that out of an immaculate Virgin there should be born the perfect man, the Son of God.” St. Augustine’s attitude in regard to this question is of special interest. He taught (1) that, as a rule, original sin precedes personal sin, and (2) that the Blessed Virgin Mary alone of all human beings was personally sin- less. These premises implicitly contain the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. But St. Augustine never for- mally drew this conclusion. Julian of Eclanum accused him of treating the Deipara with even greater disrespect than the heretic Jovinian: “He [Jovinian] makes Mary’s virginity come to an end owing to the law of parturition, you transfer Mary herself to the Devil’s book, owing to the law of birth; ” ®° to which the saintly Bishop replied: ** “ We do not transfer Mary to the Devil’s book owing to the law of birth; but the reason we do not, is that this law is broken by the grace of being born 27Carm., Nistb., ni 27, ed. G: 30“ Ille virginitatem Mariae par- Bickell, p. 122, Lipsiae 1866. tus conditione dissolvit, tu ipsam 28 Its text in Migne, P. G., IT, Mariam diabolo nascendi conditione 1226, transcribis.” 29 Cfr. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Pa- 31“ Non tvranscribimus diabolo trology, Pp. 104. Mariam conditione nascendi, sed 54 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES again.” What else can this mean if not: Mary ought by right to have been conceived in original sin, but the grace of God preserved her pure and holy.*? y) The popular belief in the Immaculate Con- ception manifested itself at a comparatively early date by the introduction into the liturgy of a dis- tinct festival. This was known at first as Con- ceptio Sanctae Annae. The reference to it in the Typikon S. Sabae (com- posed about 485) is spurious, but the festival undoubt- edly became popular in the Orient as early as the second half of the seventh century, for a hymn written by St. Andrew of Crete (d. about 720) bears the inscrip- tion: “Die nona Decembris Conceptio Sanctae ac Det Aviae Annae.’ Inthe West the feast of the Immaculate Conception was celebrated about the year 840 in the king- dom of Naples and Sicily, whither it had no doubt been transplanted: from the Orient. In England the festival was observed before the Norman Conquest,** though it did not spread widely in that country till the time of Ab- bot Anselm of St. Edmundsbury, who was a cousin of St. Anselm (d. 1109). Irish Catholics probably celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception as early as 9o00.** ideo [non ‘transcribimus], quia ipsa by Edmund Bishop in his tract, On conditio nascendi solvitur gratia the Origins of the Feast of the renascendi.” (Op. Imperf. contra Conception of the Bl. Virgin Mary, Tulian., IV, n. 122.) London 1904. Cfr. also Kellner, 32 Cfr. Th. Livius, C. SS. R., Heortology (English ed.), Appen- The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers, dix X: ‘“ English Writers and the Feast of the Immaculate Concep- tion,” pp. 445-7. 34 Cfr. H. Thurston, S. J., “The pp. 243 saq.; Tixeront, History of Dogmas, Vol. III, pp. 466 sq. Fora solution of certain other Patristic difficulties we refer the student to Pesch, Praelect. Dogmat., Vol. HUI, 3rd ed., pp. 170 sq., Freiburg 1908. 33 The evidence for this is given Irish Origins of Our Lady’s Con- ception Feast,’ in the Month, 1904, I, pp. 449 sdd. HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION Be When the festival began to make its way from Italy to Gaul, in the twelfth century, a famous theological controversy arose as to its lawfulness. This was, how- ever, confined to the circle of the learned and never affected the masses of the people. The cult of the Jm- maculata steadily grew more popular and finally struck root in Rome, where the feast was first observed in the fourteenth century.” In celebrating this festival the faithful did not mean to honor the Blessed Virgin as one who, like St. John the Baptist, had been cleansed from original sin in the ma- ternal womb,®* but as originally conceived without the slightest stain.*” b) The second period of the controversy, which led to a general clarification of ideas in the West- ern world—the East never wavered in its belief in the Immaculate Conception—began in 1140, when St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote his famous letter to the Canons of Lyons, who had begun to celebrate the feast of our Lady’s Conception with- out having the authority of the Holy See for this “innovation.” a) St. Bernard insisted that nothing but what is “holy” can be the object of devotion, and in a vehement letter warned the Canons against the absurdity of cele- 35 Cfr. Benedict XIV, De Festis honor of St. Elizabeth: Festum B. Virginis, c. 15, n. 21.— On the institution and spread of the Fes- tival of the Immaculate Conception see especially Kellner, Heortology, pp. 239-264, London 1908. 86 There was such a feast in Conceptionis S. Elisabeth. 37 Cfr. Palmieri, De Deo Creante et Elevante, thes. 84; Kellner, Heortology, pp. 241 sqq. On the ancient liturgies see Tepe, Instit. Theolog., Vol. III, p. 699, Paris 1896, 56 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES brating a “ false sanctity,” that is, the sanctity of a being not yet existing, or, what would be still worse, “ sin,” 1. €., the carnal act of Mary’s parents. Hence, while he raised no objection to the feast of our Lady’s nativ- ity, he did protest against celebrating her “ immaculate conception.’’—“‘ No doubt,” he wrote, “the mother of God was holy even before she was born, and the Church is by no means mistaken in keeping holy the day of her birth . . . But she could not be holy before she existed, as she did not exist before she was conceived. Or did sanctity perhaps commingle with her conception so that she was sanctified and conceived at one and the same time? ... Or are we to assume that there was no sin [concupiscence] where there was sensual delectation? Or will some one perhaps say that Mary was not con- ceived of a man but of the Holy Ghost? But this is something hitherto unheard of.” * If we take the term conception in its active sense (con- ceptio activa sive seminalis) in contradistinction and opposition to passive conception (conceptio passiva sive personalis), which coincides with the creation of the spir- itual soul and its infusion into the foetus, St. Bernard was undoubtedly right in demanding that the conception of our Lady be excluded from public and private worship. But he went too far when he argued: “ Hence, if Mary could not be sanctified before her conception, since she was not yet in existence, nor in the act of conception itself, 38“ Fuit procul dubio et mater Domini ante sancta quam nata, nec fallitur omnino sancta ecclesia sanc- tam reputans ipsum nativitatis eius diem. ...Sed non valuit ante sancta esse quam esse, siquidem non erat, antequam conciperetur. An forte inter amplexus maritales sanc- titas se ipst conceptut immiscuit, ut simul et sanctificata fuerit et con- cepta? ... Aut certe peccatum [sctl. concupiscentia] quomodo non fuit, ubt libido non defmt? Nisi forte quis dicat de Spiritu sancto eam et non de viro conceptam fuisse: sed id hactenus inauditum.”’ (Ep., ad Canonicos Lugd., n. 5 sqq., apud Migne, P. L., CULXXXII, 333+) HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION on account of the sin [concupiscence] involved therein, it ’ follows that she was sanctified in the womb after concep- tion, which, since she was cleansed from sin, made her na- tivity holy, not her conception.” *® This argument is fal- lacious, because it ignores a fourth possibility, namely the sanctification of Mary’s soul in the instant of its creation (conceptio passiva personalis). What led a number of medieval theologians to op- pose the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was that they misunderstood the real point at issue. Instead of endlessly harping on the query: “ Was the Blessed Virgin Mary sanctified before or after the infusion of her soul into her body?” they should have formulated the problem thus: “Was the soul of the. Blessed Virgin sanctified at the moment of its creation?” But they disregarded this intrinsic possibility, on which the dogma of the Immaculate Conception rests. It never occurred to them to put the question thus, because, while they firmly believed that the Blessed Virgin Mary stood as much in need of redemption as the rest of humankind, they were unable to conceive redemption otherwise than as a cleansing from original sin with which all men are born into the world. Had the Scholastics generally per- sol. c«, n. 7: “St igitur notion of the active conception, [Maria] ante conceptum suit sanc- tificart minime potuit, quoniam non erat, sed nec in ipso quidem con- ceptu propter peccatum quod inerat [t. e@. concupiscentiam], restat ut post conceptum in utero iam ex- istens sanctificationem accepisse cre- daiur, quae excluso peceato sancitam fecerit nativitatem, non tamen et conceptionem.”’ — * St. Bernard,”’ comments Archbishop Ullathorne (The Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, Revised ed. by Canon Iles, London i905, pp. 135 sq.), “is clearly arguing upon the which the Church does not contem- plate in the mystery. Hence Albert the Great observes: ‘ We say that the Blessed Virgin was not sancti- fied before animation, and _ the affirmative contrary to this is the heresy condemned by St. Bernard in his epistie to the canons of Eyons:; Gn 7 LiD i rdistnissu art. 4). And St. Bonaventure also says that from St. Bernard’s words ‘it is simply to be conceded that her flesh was not sanctified before ani- mation)> (In DIT, dist., 3)ipy x, a..z, qu. 1).’? 58 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES ceived, what the subtle mind of Scotus saw so clearly, U82.8 that redemption may be conceived as preredemption (pres- ervation or prevention), they would undoubtedly have been unanimous in deducing the doctrine of the Im- maculate Conception as a logical conclusion from the traditional teaching on the perpetual and absolute sin- lessness of Mary. It has been said of St. Thomas that he virtually held the conclusions which he formally com- batted in his Mariological discussions, and this is equally true of all other Scholastic theologians who thought it their duty to oppose the doctrine of the Immaculate Con- ception.*? B) St. Bernard’s letter to the Canons of Lyons drew forth emphatic protests from such learned and pious the- ologians as Friar Nicholas of St. Alban’s.** But these protests remained unheeded, until the famous Francis- can Duns Scotus (d. 1308) refuted the chief objection that had been raised against the doctrine of the Im- maculate Conception. Had the “Subtle Doctor” and his school done nothing else for the Catholic cause than to defend and successfully establish this dogma, they would deserve a place of honor in the history of medieval the- ology. Scotus argued as follows: “ He who is the most per- fect mediator must have a most perfect act of mediation in regard to some person on whose behalf he exercises his 40 On the attitude of St. Thomas, cfr. Archbishop Ullathorne, The Immaculate Conception, p. 137: “His great difficulty appears to have arisen on the question how she could have been redeemed if she had not sinned. This difficulty he has raised in not fewer than ten passages of his writings. But whilst St. Thomas thus held back from the essential point of the doc- trine, it is most worthy to be re- marked that he himself laid down the principles which, after they had been drawn together, and worked out through a longer course of thought, enabled other minds to furnish the true solution of his diffi- culty from his own premises.” 41 Cfr. ‘Migne, P. L., CCII, 617 sqq. HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION — £9 mediatorial office. Now Christ is a most perfect medi- ator ... and He had no more exalted relation to any person than to the B. V. Mary... . This could not be, had He not merited for her preservation from original sins ctr . The subtle difficulty that Mary was a daughter of Adam before she could become an adopted daughter of God, and therefore must necessarily have experienced the taint of original sin, Scotus solved by applying the Scho- lastic distinction between ordo naturae and ordo tem- ports.** In the order of nature, he argued, Mary was a daughter of Adam before she was justified; but in the order of time her sanctification coincided with the crea- tion of her soul. In elaborating this idea he employs a beautiful simile. “ Some,” he says, “ have been raised up after they had fallen, but the Virgin Mary was, as it were, sustained in the very act of falling, and prevented from falling, like the two men who were about to tumble Uitoxaepit 27:45 The strength of the Scotistic argument lies mainly in the concept of praeredemptio. Preredemption, Scotus contends, is possible, because absolutely speaking God can infuse grace without the expulsion of any previously existing sin.*® Preredemption was a fit mode of pre- serving the Blessed Virgin from sin, because she was the .mother of God, and as such could never be at enmity 42 “ Perfectissimus mediator habet ZS NC. Us iene tS) Sad. perfectissimum actum mediandi re- spectu alicuius personae, pro qua mediat. Sed Christus est perfectis- simus mediator.... Sed respectu nulliws personae habuit excellenti- orem gradum quam respectu Mariae. -.. Sed hoc non esset, nisi meruis- set eam praeservart a peccato origi- nalt.” (Comment. in Quatuor Li- bros Sententiarum, III, dist. 3, qu. he paky ls) 44 Alu -post casum erectt sunt, virgo Maria quast in ipso casu sus- tenia est, ne rueret, sicut exemplum ponitur de duobus cadentibus in Wto RGN cs, ney 2) y 45 “ Absolute posset esse infusio gratiae sine expulsione alicuius cul- pae praecedentis, sicut fuit in b. Virgine.” (Rep., IV, dist. 16, qu. 2, n. 26.) 60 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES with God, which would have been the case, for a time at least, had she not been preserved from original sin.** The Scotists nearly all followed the lead of their mas- ter. Among the zealous Franciscan defenders of the Immaculate Conception two deserve special mention: Peter Aureolus (d. 1322), and Francis Mayron (d. 1327), who wrote copiously in defense of the famous syllogism: “ Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit,’ that is to say: It was becoming that the Mother of the Redeemer should be free from the power of sin and Satan from the first moment of her existence; it was in God’s power to give her this privilege; therefore he gave it.*” y) It was due solely to the ancient feud between the Franciscans and the Dominicans that the latter now sharply renewed their opposition to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception with a special appeal to the authority of St. Thomas. Some Dominican divines even went so far as to censure the Scotist view as heretical. The opposition, which was at first conducted with prudent moderation by men of the stamp of Cardinal Torquemada (1388-1468), eventually developed into a veritable furor theologicus. Bondelli (1481) and Bartholomew Spina (d. 1546) were particularly vehement. Besides such moderate opponents as Cardinal Cajetan (1469-1534), Francis a Sylvestris (1474-1528), and Bartholomew de Medina (1528-1581), the Order of St. Dominic, at this critical juncture, also furnished a few defenders of the doctrine, notably Ambrosius Catharinus (1487-1553), John a S. Thoma (1589-1644), and Natalis Alexander (1639-1724). 46 Mater Dei, quae nunquam bros Sent., III, dist. 18, qu. 1, n. fuit inimica actualiter ratione pec- 13) cati actualis nec ratione originalis; 47 Scotus, Comment. in Quatuor fuisset tamen, nisi fuisset praeser- Libros Sent., III, dist. 3. vata.’ (Comment. in Quatuor Li- HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 61? The first serious attempt to upset the authority of St. Thomas and to blaze a way for the doctrine of the Scotists, which was constantly strengthening its claims, was made by Seraphine Capponi della Porretta, ©. P. (1536-1614), who endeavored to show that the Angelic Doctor had been an advocate, or at least no Opponent, of the Immaculate Conception. When, in process of time, the Thomistic position was gradually perceived to be untenable, the Thomists one by one retired from the fray and tried to interpret St. Thomas in favor of the Scotistic doctrine, as the Jesuits had done from the be- ginning. Already before the foundation of the Society of Jesus, Cardinal Cajetan had observed that “ among modern theologians the number of those who hold that the Blessed Virgin was preserved from original sin, is in- finite.” *® The Jesuit Peter Canisius (1521-1597) could truthfully say of his own time: “Very few now hold the contrary opinion, and these are ashamed to speak their mind openly and consider it dangerous to profess their belief in public. If they dared to speak out, they would meet with public contradiction and give offense to the people; to such a degree has the opinion adverse to the Immaculate Conception been weakened, exploded, and as" it’ were cast out.” 4° Those who had opposed the doctrine withdrew before long to their lecture rooms, while the Christian populace 48“ Doctores tenentes B. Vir- ginem esse praeservatam a peccato original, sunt numero infiniti, si ad modernos spectemus.’ (Opusc. de Concept. Virg. ad Leonem X.) 49 Canisius, De Maria Deipara, I, 7: “Qui secus modo sentiunt, eorum sane rarus est numerus, hique pudore impediti, quod in animo gerunt et secum ipsi tacite loquuntur ac sentiunt, palam efferre ac pronuntiare non satis tutum ar- bitrantur; tum, st id facere quidem audeant, haud sine publica contra- dictione vulgique offensione audiun- tur: usque adeo et invisa et debili- tata et explosa et quodammodo eiecta est penitus nunc opinio ad- versariorum.” 62 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES continued to profess the Immaculate Conception with constantly increasing fervor. 8) Thus the process of clarification, which had begun in the twelfth century, gradually took its course, the Church either urging on or restrain- ing the combatants, as prudence dictated. The Council of Basle (1439), in its thirty-sixth session, declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to be the official teaching of the Church. Though not a binding definition (for the Council was at that time without a head), this declaration attests the belief of the fifteenth cen- tury. Sixtus IV, by a decree dated February 28, 1476, granted indulgences to all who recited the canonical office or assisted at the Mass of the Im- maculate Conception,*® and when this did not abate the conflict, in 1483 issued an Apostolic Constitution (“Grave nimis’’) in which he threat- ened to excommunicate all those of either school who dared to charge their opponents with heresy. The Council of Trent left the question where Sixtus [V had put it, but “declared that it is not the intention of this holy Synod to include in the decree which treats of original sin the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, but that the constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV, 50 The festival of the Immaculate the latter half of the sixteenth cen- Conception was not raised to the tury,— in 1568, by Pope Pius Vic rank of a festival of obligation until HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 63 of happy memory, are to be observed under the pains inflicted by the said constitutions, which it [the Tridentine Council] renews.” ** In 1567, Pope St. Pius V condemned the prop- osition (No. 73) of Baius, that “no one but Christ was without original sin, and that there- fore the Blessed Virgin died in consequence of the sin contracted through Adam, and endured afflic- tions in this life, like the rest of the just, as pun- ishments for actual and original sin.” °? A year later the same Pope made the feast of the Im- maculate Conception a holyday of obligation for the entire Church. Paul V, in 1616, forbade public discussion of the subject in pulpit and rostrum, and Gregory XV, in 1622, imposed absolute silence on all par- ties, with but one exception in favor of the Dominicans, who were permitted to debate the Immaculate Conception in private. Finally, Pope Alexander VII, by the famous Constitution “Solicitudo,’ of December 8, 1661, 51 Sess. V, sub fin.: “ Declarat tamen haec ipsa S. Synodus, non esse suae intentionis comprehendere in hoc decreto, ubi de peccato ort- ginali agitur, beatam et immaculatam Virginem Mariam, Det genitricem, sed observandas esse constitutiones felicis recordationis -Sixti Papae IV. sub poenis in ets constitutionibus contentis, quas innovat.’ On the proceedings of the Council with re- gard to this question see S. Merkle, Concil. Trident., I: Diaria, t. I, pp. 64 sqq., Friburgi 1901. 52° Nemo praeter Chrisium est absque peccato originali; hinc B. Virgo mortua est propter peccatum ex Adam contractum omnesque eius afflictiones in hac vita, sicut et aliorum iustorum, fuerunt ultiones peccati actualis vel originalis.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1073.) 64 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES renewed all the decrees of his predecessors and subjected the writings of those who attacked the Immaculate Conception to the rules of the Roman Tndex.)? From this time on the question was ripe for a final decision; but it was not until nearly two centuries \later; that. Pope Pins IX: formally defined and promulgated the dogma of the Im- maculate Conception. 4. THE THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.—The theo- logical argument for the dogma of the Immac- ulate Conception rests entirely on reasons of fitness, wzg.: (a) due regard for the infinite majesty and honor of the Divine Logos, for whose sake our Lady was preserved from sin, and (b) the exalted dignity of her divine motherhood.°* a) The Immaculate Conception constitutes a most ex- traordinary personal privilege, which our Lady received not for her own sake but for the sake of Christ. As the glory of a child reflects honor on his parents, so the shame | of a parent brings disgrace upon the child.°> Hence any sinful taint in Mary would have reflected unfavorably on her Divine Son. Besides, the granting of such an ex- traordinary privilege to His mother redounds to the glory of Christ in His capacity of Redeemer. Far from 53 Cfr. B. Plazza, Causa Immac. Concept., pp. 390 sqq., Panormi 1557; Ullathorne, The Immaculate Conception (revised ed. by Canon Iles), pp. 56 sqq., 151, London 1905. 54‘... tum propter Christi prae- cipuum honorem, quem decebat de purissima matre fierit, tum propter Virginis praerogativam, quae debuit in dignitate sanctificationis ceteros sanctos et sanctas praeire.’ (St. Bonaventure, Comment. in Quatuor inoros Sent., DEM, dist. 3; p.01, atte Te eG uioy) Gb.Cir.) Prova oc Villo 6. HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 65 diminishing, the. Immaculate Conception enhances and shows forth His dignity and power. A man may be redeemed in a twofold manner, eaher by being cleansed from sin or by being preserved from it altogether. The latter mode of redemption is un- doubtedly the more perfect of the two, for, as Lorinus observes, “To prevent one from falling into something from which he would have to be rescued, is the nobler way of liberation.” ** To hold that Mary was exempt from original sin is not to deny that she was redeemed by Jesus Christ, but to assert that she was redeemed by Him in a most perfect manner, which greatly redounds to the glory of the Redeemer. b) Our reason shrinks from the thought that she who was from all eternity predestined to be the living temple of the Logos, the Sanctum Sanctorum of the New Testa- ment, should have been even temporarily tainted by orig- inal sin. St. Bonaventure holds that the dignity of di- vine motherhood raised Mary to a unique rank unat- tainable by any other creature. This being the case, logic demands that she should be absolutely, pure and stainless. Had she ever, even for a single moment, been under the yoke that weighs so heavily on the “ chil- dren of anger,’ she would not have been always and absolutely pure. As Deipara Mary undoubtedly surpasses Eve and all the angels of Heaven in dignity. Now Eve and the an- gels were created in a state of original holiness, hence it would not be reasonable to suppose that Mary, whose dignity is so far superior to theirs, and who is rightly called the ‘“‘ Heavenly Eve” and “ Queen of Angels,” was created in the state of original sin.°* 56 “ Nobilior liberandit modus est debeat liberari.”” (Comment. in Ps., impedire, ne quis in id incidat, unde 85, 13.) 57 But it would be heretical to 66 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES St. John the Baptist was sanctified in his mother’s womb because he was destined to be the precursor of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Mary must have been sanctified from the very beginning of her existence, for else she would be on a par with the precursor, which is repugnant. The opponents of the dogma never denied that the Blessed Virgin, on account of her exalted dignity, was preserved from personal sin (peccatum actuale) and the effects of concupiscence (concupiscentia) all her life.* Now, according to St. Augustine, original sin is related to actual (or personal) sin as cause to effect. Actual or personal sin mostly originates in concupiscence, which in its turn is a penalty of original sin.°® Hence the absence of one implies absence of the other. Mary never committed actual sin, consequently she must have been conceived without original sin. Again, it is the teaching of the Fathers that Christ was exempt from original sin, not only because He was the Divine Logos, but also because of His virginal conception and birth.°° “ He alone was born without sin,” says St. Austin, “whom His virgin mother conceived without the embrace of a husband, not by the concupiscence of the flesh, but by the submission of her mind.” *' It was meet that Christ should confer the immunity to which He was entitled as King, at least as a privilege upon His b) hold, as Petrus Comestor (+ 1179) did, that Mary was in every way equal to our first parents before the fall and consequently stood in no need of redemption. This is a point of view which throws new light on the opposition of so many theologians to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception before its definition. Cfr. Commer’s Jahrbuch fiir Philosophie und _ spekulative Theologie, 1905, pp. 483 sqq. 58 V. infra, Section 2. 59 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God the Author of Nature and the Super- natural, p. 289. 60 Op. cit., pp. 281, 286. 61 “ Solus sine peccato natus est, quem sine virili complexu non concupiscentia carnis, sed obedien- tid mentis virgo concepit.”’ (De Pecc. Merit. et Rem., I, n. 57.) HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 67 Queen, according to the principle laid down by the Roman legist Ulpian, that “ A king is not subject to the laws, and though his queen is subject to them, the king grants her the same privileges which he himself enjoys.” °? This explains the deeper meaning of the memorable words which King Assuerus spoke to Esther, who was a proto- type of the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Fear not, Thou shalt not die; for this law is not made for thee, but for all othersaa* 5. THE TEACHING oF St. THomas.—Theo- logians are divided in their opinion as to what was the mind of St. Thomas in regard to the Immaculate Conception. Some %* frankly admit that he opposed what in his day was not yet a defined dogma, but insist that he virtually ad- mitted what he formally denied. Others °° claim that the Angelic Doctor expressly defended the Immaculate Conception and that the (about fifteen) adverse passages quoted from his writ- ings must be regarded as later interpolations. Between these extremes stand two other groups of theologians, one of which °° holds that St. Thomas was undecided in his attitude towards the Immac- ulate Conception, while the other °* merely main- tains the impossibility of proving that he opposed the doctrine. 62“ Princeps legibus subditus non est, augusta vero, licet sit subdita, princeps tamen eadem privilegia itlli concedtt, quae ipse habet.” i 63 Esth. XV, 12 sq. Cfr. Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 3, sect. 5, where these considerations are developed at length. 64 Scheeben, Schwane, Chr. Pesch, Tobbe, Gutberlet. 65 Velasquez, Sfondrati, Frassen, Lambruschini, Palmieri. 66 To this group belong Malou, Tepe, and others. 67 Prominent in this group are Cornoldi, Morgott, Hurter, etc. 68 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES a) In order to arrive at a just and impartial idea of St. Thomas’ position we shall have to study his teach- ing in connection with what may be called its theological environment. Influenced by the attitude of St. Bernard, who was otherwise an ardent devotee of the Blessed Virgin, all the predecessors and contemporaries of the Angelic Doctor — with the exception perhaps of his fel- low Dominican Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1264) — op- posed the Immaculate Conception. Of St. Anselm of Canterbury, the “ Father of Scholasticism,” it has been truly said that, like Aquinas, he virtually asserted the Immaculate Conception in his premises and denied it formally in his conclusions.®°* It is to Anselm that Scholasticism owes the oft-quoted Mariological principle: “Tt was meet that the Blessed Virgin should shine in a splendor of purity than which none greater can be con- ceived under God, that virgin to whom God the Father had determined to give His Son, whom He had begotten as His equal, and whom He loved like Himself,— and He gave Him in such wise that He would be the Son of both God the Father and the Virgin.” °° : Peter Lombard (d. 1164) taught that “the Blessed Virgin bore the taint of original sin, but was entirely cleansed before she conceived Christ.”7° This was the common teaching in the Franciscan Order. No won- der that the most eminent theologians of that Order, up to the time of Duns Scotus (d. 1308), battled side by side with the Dominicans. Not to mention Alex- 68 Cfr. Cur Deus Homo? Il, 16. Filius.’ (De Concept. Virg., ©. 69“ Decens erat, ut ea puritate, 18.) qua sub Deo maior nequit intelligt, 70“ Beata Virgo habuit peccatum virgo illa niteret, cut Deus Pater originale, sed ante conceptionem unicum Filium suum, quem de Christi perfecte purgata est.” corde suo aequalem sibi genitum tamquam seipsum diligebat, ita dare disponebat, ut unus idemque com- munis Dei Patris et Virginis esset (Liber Sent., III, dist. 3.) 71 Among them Albert the Great (1193-1280), who was the teacher of St. Thomas. HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 69. ander of Hales (d. 1245), St. Bonaventure, who was one of the greatest lights among the Minorites, while ad- mitting that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception might be defended as probable on the strength of certain considerations of fitness," openly espoused the opposite view.” b) Placed in a theological environment in which the true solution of the problem was not yet attainable, St. Thomas, in common with the most eminent and saintly doctors of his time, had a perfect right to defend a thesis which was by no means regarded as scandalous but open to discussion. The dogma of the Immaculate Concep- tion was still in process of clarification. The Angelic Doctor nowhere expressly teaches the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the sense in which it has since been defined as an article of faith. True, he says with St. Anselm: “ Purity is constituted by a recession from impurity, and therefore it is possible to find some creature purer than all the rest, namely one not contaminated by any taint of sin; such was the purity of the Blessed Virgin, who was immune from original and actual sin, yet under God, inasmuch as there was in her the potentiality of sin.’"4 But the “ immun- ity from original sin” which St. Thomas ascribes to our 72 Cir. his Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 9, memb. 2, navent., t, III, p. 60, Quaracchi_ edition, scholion, 73 He writes: “ Quidam dicere voluerunt, in anima gloriosa vir- ginis gratiam sanctificationis prae- venisse maculam peccati originalis. ... Aliorum vero positio est, quod sanctificatio virginis subsecuta est originalis peccati contractionem, et hoc quia nullus immunis fuit a culpa originalis peccati nist solum Filius virginis: hic autem modus dicendt communior est et rationa- bilior et securior.”’ (Opera S. Bo- 1887.) 74“ Puritas intenditur per reces- sum @ contrario, et ideo potest ali- quid creatum inveniri, quo nihil purius esse potest in rebus creatis, si nulla contagione peccati inquina- tum sit: et talis fuit puritas b. Vir- ginis, quae a peccato originali et actuali immunis futt, tamen sub Deo, inquantum erat in ea potentia ad peccandum.” (Comment. in Quatuor Libros Sent., I, dist. 44, QU.) Ts abt. 13). 70 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES Lady is not synonymous with “immaculate conception,” as can be seen from the third part of the famous Summa Theologica, qu. 27, art. 2, ad 2. Consequently, it is not fair to charge the Angelic Doctor with inconsistency be- cause in numerous other passages, where he treats the question ex professo, he denies the doctrine of the Im- maculate Conception. He did not hold that God could not create a perfectly spotless creature,— his objections are mainly based on the privileged character of the Re- deemer and the absolute necessity of redemption for all human beings without exception. The following pass- age from the Summa Theologica shows that its author consistently adhered to his standpoint up to the time of his death. “If the soul of the Blessed Virgin had never been defiled by original sin, this would derogate from the dignity of Christ as the Redeemer of all man- kind. It may be said, therefore, that under Christ, who as the universal Saviour needed not to be saved Himself, the Blessed Virgin enjoyed the highest measure of purity. For Christ in no wise contracted original sin, but was holy in His very conception ... The Blessed Virgin, however, did contract original sin, but was cleansed there- from before her birth.” *° This is the uniform teaching of Aquinas in all his writings, vig.: that the birth of our Lady was holy and immaculate, but not her conception.” 75“ Si nunquam anima b. Vir- ginis fuisset contagio originalis pec- cati inquinata, hoc derogaret dignt- tati Christi, secundum quam est uni- versalis omnium Salvator. Et ideo sub Christo, qui salvari non indi- guit, tamquam universalis Salvator, maxima fuit b. Virginis puritas. Nam Christus nullo modo contraxtt originale peccatum, sed in ipsa sus conceptione fuit sanctus... . Sed b. Virgo contraxit quidem originale peccatum, sed ab eo fuit mundata antequam ex utero masceretur.” (Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 27, art. 2, ad 2). 76 Cfr. Comp. Theol., c. 224. It is an error that the Domin- HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 7 READINGS : — Besides the general works quoted on pp. 35 sqq., supra, the student will find it profitable to consult on the subject of the Immaculate Conception the following: Th. Stozzi, Con- troversia dell’ Immacolata Concezione, 2 vols., Palermo 1700.— B. Plazza, Causa Immaculatae Conceptionis, Panormi 1557.— Lambruschini, Sull’ Immacolato Concepimento di Maria, Rome 1843.—*Ant. Ballerini, Sylloge Monumentorum ad Myst. Imma- culatae Conceptionis Spectantium, 2 vols., Rome 1854-6.— * Pas- saglia, De Immaculato Conceptu B. Mariae Virginis, 3 vols., Rome 1855.—*Malou, De l’Immaculée Conception, 2 vols., Brux- elles 1857 Cornoldi, Sententia S. Thomae de Immumitate B. Virginis Dei Parentis a Peccati Originalis Labe, and ed., Naples 1870.— A. Roskovanyi, De B. Virgine Maria in suo Conceptu Immaculata ex Monumentis Omnium Saeculorum Declarata, 9 vols., Neutra 1873-81.—*Palmieri, De Deo Creante et Elevante, thes. 82 sqq., Rome 1878—W. Tobbe, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquin zu der unbefleckten Empfangnis, Munster 1892-—C. M. Schneider, Die unbefleckte Empfingnis und die Erbsiinde, Ratisbon 1892—*Chr. Pesch, Praelectiones Dogma- ticae, Vol. III, 3d ed., pp. 152 sqq., Freiburg 1908— X. M. Le Bachelet, S. J., L’Immaculée Conception, Paris 1904.— L. Kosters, S. J., Maria die unbefleckt Empfangene, Ratisbon 1905.— J. B: Terrien, S. J., L’Immaculée Conception, Paris 1904.— P. Fried- rich, Die Mariologie des hl. Augustinus, Freiburg 1907.— Arch- bishop Ullathorne, O. S. B., The Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, Revised by Canon Iles, Westminster 1904.— F. G. Holweck, Fasti Mariani, Freiburg 1892.— IpEM, art. “ Im- maculate Conception” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VUL.— E. Vacandard, “Les Origines de la Féte et du Dogme, de l’Im- maculée Conception” in the third volume of the Etudes de Critique et de l’Histoire Religieuse, Paris 1912— Jos. Rickaby, S. J., “ The Immaculate Conception a Development of Doctrine,” in The Lord My Light, pp. 223-230, London 1915.— J. H. New- man, “Memorandum on the Immaculate Conception,” in Medita- tions and Devotions, London I9gII, pp. 79 sqq. ican Order has always, and in al- ception, ed. Iles, pp. 144 sqq. most all its distinguished men, been fr. also Pesch, Prael. Dogmat., onposed to the pure origin of the Vol. III, 3rd ed. pp. 170 sqq.; Blessed Virgin. See Archbishop L. Janssens, De Deo-Homine, Vol. Ullathorne, The Immaculate Con-. II, pp. 130 sqq. SECTION 2 MARY’S SINLESSNESS The Blessed Virgin Mary was free from con- cupiscence, which is the source of personal or actual sin. It follows that she was absolutely sinless, and, in a sense, impeccable. We shall make our meaning clear in three theses. Thesis I: The Blessed Virgin Mary was through- out her life actually exempt from every impulse of concupiscence. This proposition is theologically certain. Proof. The term concupiscence may signify either a habit (habitus concupiscentiae, fomes pec- catt), or the exercise of that habit (actus concu- piscentiae, motus inordinati) 1 As a habit, concupiscence does not involve a state of enmity with God. So long as the will withholds its free consent, the first inordinate stirrings (actus primo- primi) of concupiscence are not formally sinful and, therefore, do not per se involve a moral defect. Ob- jectively and materially, however, they run counter to the moral law, and the only reason why they are not sinful is the absence of free consent, which is a subjective con- 1Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God the Author of Nature and the Supernat- ural, pp. 200 sqq. 72 HER SINLESSNESS 73%; dition of sin. For this reason St. Paul calls concupis- cence sin, and the Council of Trent explains that it “ orig- inates in and leads to sin.’? In this sense concupiscence, both as a habit and as an act, involves a moral taint, es- pecially if the habit be conceived as seeking vent in in- ordinate movements. Revelation does not tell us whether or not concupis- cence existed as a habit in the soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary. If it did, it never manifested itself in objectively sinful motions, because Our Lady, for the sake of her Divine Son, was preserved absolutely pure and immacu- late. This is Catholic teaching which has at all times been so generally acknowledged that the opponents of the Immaculate Conception never ventured to attack it. a) The Protevangelium ® and the Angelic Sal- utation * furnish no stringent proof for our thesis, because concupiscence does not necessarily entail enmity with God. The argument rests mainly on Christian Tradition, which, since about the fifth century, so consistently developed the idea of Mary’s absolute sinlessness that it became an axiom with the Scholastics that “the Mother of God must have been endowed with a purity in- ferior only to that of God Himself and His Christ.”® Now, though concupiscence is called sin only in a figurative sense, its indeliberate stir- rings, as we have said, involve a moral taint, which cannot be harmonized with the notion of ab- 2“... quia ex peccato est et ad 4Luke I, 28. peccatuwm inclinat.”? (Sess. V,- can. 5 “ Mater Det eG puritate nitere 5; Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 792.) _ debuit, qué sub Deo vel Christo 3 Gen, III, 15. maior nequit intelligi.” 74 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES solute purity. Consequently, the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the pure Mother of God, must have been entirely exempt from concupiscence. a) Some of the traditional witnesses give explicit ut- terance to this conclusion. Thus Hesychius of Jerusalem refers to our Lady as “ she whom the odor of concupis- cence hath not touched, nor the worm of pleasure harmed.” ® St. John of Damascus greets her as a “ holy book, imperviable to evil thoughts.”* Other Patristic writers exalt her purity above that of the angels, and thus virtually declare her immune both from original sin and concupiscence. Thus we read in the works of St. Ephrem Syrus: “ Mother of God... all-pure, all-immaculate, all-stainless, all-undefiled, all-blameless, all-worthy of praise, all-incorrupt;. .. after the Trinity, mistress of all: after the Paraclete, another consoler; and after the Mediator, the whole world’s mediatrix; higher beyond compare than Cherubim and Seraphim, .. . fulness of the graces of the Trinity, holding the second place after the Godhead.” § B) The theological argument rests partly on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception,” and partly on that of our Lady’s perpetual virginity.” 6 Hom. in Deipar., I (Migne, P. G., XCIII, 1466). 7 Orat. in Deip. Nativ., 2, n. 7. 8 Opera Gr. .) Lat. III, ~ 528: “ Tota casta, tota immaculata, tota illibata, tota intemerata, tota in- contaminata, tota celebranda, tota incorrupta.... Post SS. Trinita- tem omnium Domina, post Paracle- tum altera consolatrix, et post Me- diatorem mediatrix totius mundi, sine comparatione superior et glort- osior Cherubim et Seraphim.... Plenitudo gratiarum Trinitatis, se- cundas post divinitatem partes fe- rens.’ For a more detailed state- ment of the Patristic argument in favor of our thesis consult Palmieri, De Deo Creante et Elevante, thes. 90, Rome 1878. 9 Supra, Section 1. 10 Infra, Section 3. HER SINLESSNESS 76 Neither of these prerogatives could coexist with con- cupiscence, which is an effect and a remnant of original sin and utterly repugnant to the high ideal of virginity which the Christian Church has always admired in our Lady.*? But if she was exempt from concupiscence, how could she perform meritorious acts? The answer is easy: by the conscientious practice of humility, obedience, mortifi- cation, and other virtues. b) Theologians at one time disputed the ques- tion whether concupiscence (fomes peccati) was merely checked (ligatus) or entirely extinct (e4- tinctus) in the Blessed Virgin. Now that her Immaculate Conception is an article of faith, this question can be decided by simply saying that con- cupiscence did not exist at all in our Blessed Mother. Being a penalty of sin, concupiscence cannot have dwelled in a soul which was never even for an instant defiled by iniquity. Following the lead of St. Thomas, most older theolo- gians divide the earthly life of our Lady into two peri- ods and hold that during the first period concupiscence lay dormant in her soul,'* while during the second, it was totally extinct.* This distinction can be defended only 11 Virgo purissima, perfectissima, unica. 12 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God the Au- thor of Nature and the Supernat- ural, p. 289. 13 They call this consopitio. 14 Extinctio, sublatio. Cfr. Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 27, art. 3: lius videtur dicendum, state ligatio, quod per “ Me- sanctificationem in utero non fuerit sublatus b. Virginit fomes secundum essentiam, sed remanserit ligatus. . . - Postmodum vero in ipsa con- ceptione carnis Christi, in qua primo debuit refulgere peccati immunitas, credendum est quod ex prole re- dundaverit in matrem, totaliter fomite sublato.” 76 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES on the assumption that our Lady’s so-called first sanctifi- cation consisted in her being cleansed from original sin in her mother’s womb, rather than in her being entirely pre- served from it. The definition of the dogma constrains us to believe, both on theological and philosophical grounds, that the habit of concupiscence was radically de- stroyed in the soul of our Lady by virtue of her Immacu- late Conception. This is really the only consistent view to take. It was espoused by some of the earliest defenders of the dogma, e. g., Duns Scotus and Gabriel Biel. The objection that so sublime a prerogative would exalt the Mother at the expense of her Divine Son, was refuted by Suarez, who showed that, rightly understood, the doc- trine of the Immaculate Conception tends rather to en- hance than to diminish the glory of Christ.*° The foregoing considerations enable us to form a solid opinion with regard to the question whether or not the sinlessness of the Blessed Virgin may be described as a state of original justice analogous to that of our first parents in Paradise. The answer depends on how we define the term iustitia originalis. If we take it to mean the totality of those supernatural and preter- natural prerogatives which our first parents enjoyed in the Garden, then Mary was not conceived and born in the state of original justice, because, unlike Adam and Eve, she was subject to death and suffering and in need of being redeemed. But if we define iustitia originalis as perfect sanctity and sinlessness, we can and must say that the state of original justice was more fully realized in Mary than in Adam and Eve. 15 Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 4, sect. 5, NM. II. HER SINLESSNESS "7 Thesis II: The Blessed Virgin Mary was by a special divine privilege actually exempt from personal sin. This thesis embodies an article of faith. root... he: Councilor. renty:declaress1y Lh, any one assert that man, after he is once justified, is able to avoid throughout his lifetime all, even venial sin, except by a special divine privilege, as the Church holds in regard to the Blessed Virgin, let him be anathema.” *° Hence it is an article of faith that Mary, in contradistinction to all other human beings, was by a special privilege preserved from venial as well as mortal sin throughout her lifetime. It should, however, be noted that this dogma merely asserts the fact of Mary’s sinlessness, but does not say that it is based on impeccability.** a) That the Blessed Virgin Mary was pre- served from sin may be inferred (1) from the Scriptural and Patristic teaching that she en- joyed the fulness of grace,** and (2) from the fact that her purity surpassed that of the angels. The argument is strengthened by a consideration of her intimate union with Christ, the ‘‘second Adam,” and her own antithetical relation to the Hurst Eve,” 16 Sess.. VI, can. 23: .“ Sz quis dum de b. Virgine tenet Ecclesia, hominem semel iustificatum di- anathema sit.”” (Denzinger-Bann- werit. . « » posse in tota vita peccata wart, n. 833.) omnia, etiam venialia vitare, nisi ex 17 Cfr. Thesis III, infra. Special Det privilegio, quemadmo- 18V. supra, pp. 24 sqq 78 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES Mary was incapable of committing mortal sin for the reason that God had put absolute and permanent enmity between her and the devil, which fact is incompatibie with original, and a fortiori with mortal, sin.® She could not even commit venial sin; for though venial sin does not destroy the bond of friendship with God, it involves a positive moral defect which we can not attribute to the Blessed Virgin Mary without running counter to the traditional conception of her absolute sinlessness.?° If Mary were not absolutely stainless, the Church could not exhort us to address her in the terms of the Canticle of Canticles: ‘“ Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is nota spot an ‘thee. b) As regards Tradition, the dogma of the sinlessness of the Blessed Virgin, unlike that of her Immaculate Conception, did not undergo a process of clarification, but existed from the beginning in the fully developed form in which it has come down tous. “We must except the Holy Virgin Mary,” says St. Augustine, “concerning whom I wish to raise no question, when it touches the subject of sin, out of honor to the Lord.” ” In other words, the Blessed Virgin Mary was without sin because the honor of her Divine Son demanded it. This quotation from St. Augustine fairly represents the belief of Western Christendom. Strange to say, the 19V. supra, pp. 43 saq.- Mariad, de qua propter honorem 20 Cfr. Al. Schaefer, Die Gottes- Domini nullam prorsus, quum de mutter in der Hl. Schrift, p. 116. peccato agitur, haberi volo quae- (Engl. tr., pp. 123 sqq.) stionem.” (De Nat. et Grat., c. 36, 21 Canticle of Canticles IV, 7. Nn. 42.) 22“ Exceptaé itaque S. Virgine HER SINLESSNESS 29 dogma of the personal sinlessness of our Lady suffered temporary obscuration in the East, where the Immacu- late Conception was so tenaciously professed. St. Chrys- ostom holds that the petition which Mary addressed to her Son at the marriage feast of Cana was prompted by fem- inine vanity and her desire to speak to Jesus when He was preaching to the multitudes,?? by imperiousness.** St. basil aand ) St. Cyril’ of (Alexandria **\\interpret the prophecy of Simeon as implying that a doubt in the Divin- ity of Jesus would enter the heart of Mary under the Cross. Petavius boldly censures these opinions as “ pre- posterous.” 27. However, the fact that they were held by such eminent authorities proves that during the first four centuries the dogma of the personal sinlessness of our Lady was not so generally believed in the East as in the West, where SS. Ambrose and Augustine proclaimed and defended it. The attitude of the Greek Fathers may perhaps be explained by the fact that they were imbued with the Oriental notion that woman is in- ferior to man and subject to certain frailties and defects which are not strictly speaking faults. In judging their attitude, therefore, it will be well to distinguish between an accidental popular notion and the tradition of the faith. The Madgeburg Centuriators were certainly not justified in appealing to the Fathers in their endeavor to represent Mary as a sinful woman, for St. Andrew of Crete and St. John of Damascus, and long before either St. Ephrem Syrus, faithfully voiced the true ecclesiastical belief.?° 283 Matth. XII, 46 sqqa. Det matre ss. Virgine, quae nemo 24 Chrys., Hom. in Ioa., 21 (al. prudens laudare possit.”’ (De In- 22); Hom. in Matth., 44, n. 1. carn., XIV, 1.) 25 Ep. 259 ad Optim. 28 Cfr. H. Hurter, Comp. Theol. 26 In Ioa., 19, 25. Dogm., > Vol.\ LL, .\ thesiy\' 1645". St. 27“ Haec trium summorum-~viro- Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 27, rum praepostera sunt iudicia de art. 4. 85 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES Thesis III: The proximate cause of our Lady’s sinlessness was a kind of impeccability ; its remote and ultimate cause was the grace of Divine Motherhood. We are now dealing with a merely probable theological opinion. 5 Proof. Sinlessness (impeccantia) is actual freedom from sin; impeccability (ampeccabilitas), absolute inability to sin. The former does not necessarily imply the latter, because God could preserve a human being from sin by simply with- holding his physical concurrence. In the case of our Lady, however, we are justified in assuming that her purity was due to a kind of intrinsic im- peccability. Impeccability may be either metaphysical or moral. Metaphysical impeccability belongs exclusively to God, whereas moral impeccability may also be enjoyed by crea- tures. It is enjoyed, e. g., by the angels and saints in Heaven. God is impeccable because He is absolutely and infinitely holy ; 2° Christ, in consequence of the Hypostatic Union; ®° the angels and saints, by virtue of the beatific vision of the Godhead which they enjoy.*t How are we to conceive the impeccability of the Blessed Virgin Mary? It is quite obvious that her impeccability must differ specifically from that proper to God and the God- man Jesus Christ. Hers is not a divine attribute, nor is it conditioned by or based upon a personal union of divinity 29 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God: His 30 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, Knowability, Essence, and Attri- pp. 207 sqq. butes, 2nd ed., pp. 251 sqq., St. 31 This subject will be treated in Louis 1914. Eschatology. HER SINLESSNESS S11: with humanity. It cannot be a result of the beatific vision, because Mary during her sojourn on earth was a wayfarer like ourselves and did not enjoy beatitude.® Comparing her impeccability to that of the angels and saints and to that of our first parents in Paradise, we may define it as an intermediate state between the two. It would be asserting too much to say that the Blessed Virgin was capable of committing sin like our first parents; and too little to assert that during her life-time she was in- capable of sinning as the angels and saints of Heaven are now, in consequence of the beatific vision. In what, then, did her impeccability consist? We are probably not far from the truth when we assume that God gave her the gift of perfect perseverance** as against mortal sin, and that of confirmation in grace ** as against venial sin. Together with her freedom from concupis- cence these two graces may be regarded as the proximate cause of Mary’s impeccability. For its ultimate cause we must go back to the higher and more comprehensive pre- rogative of her divine motherhood.** God owed it to His own dignity and holiness, so to speak, to bestow the grace of perfect perseverance and confirmation in grace upon her from whom His Divine Son was to assume human nature. This idea is aptly illustrated by “the woman clothed with the sun” whom St. John visioned in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. The analogy between Mary’s impeccability and that of her Divine Son would seem to render this theory all the more ac- ceptable, though we must, of course, never forget that the impeccability of Christ is based upon the Hypostatic 32 V. supra, p. 31. Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, pp. 33 Donum perfectae perseveran- 221 sq. tiae. 35 Gratia maternitatis divinae. V. 34 Donum confirmationis in gratia, supra, pp. 4 Sqq. 82 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES Union of Godhead and manhood, whereas that of His Mother rests merely upon the grace of divine mother- hood.*° READINGS: —*St. Thomas, S. Theol., 3a, qu. 27, art. 4, and the commentators.— *Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 4, sect. 3-6.— Vasquez, Comment. in S. Th., disp. 11&— Petavius, De Incarnatione, XIV, 1 sqq— Albertus Magnus, Mariale, qu. 133 sqq., Lugduni 1651.— Christopher Vega, Theologia Mariana, palaestr. VII, cert. 4; IX, 1, Lugduni 1653.—*Scheeben, Dog- matik, Vol. III, § 280, Freiburg 1882— Tepe, Institutiones The- ologicae, Vol. III, pp. 708 sqq., Paris 1896.—J. Bucceroni, Com- mentarit de SS. Corde Iesu, de B. Virgine Maria et de S. Tosepho, ed. 4, pp. 81 sqq., Rome 1806. 36 Cfr. Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. III, § 280. SECTION 3 MARY’S PERPETUAL VIRGINITY The most beautiful jewel in the crown of Our Lady, aside from her immaculate conception, is her perpetual virginity. Virginity, in the sense of internal purity, is in- cluded in the concept of sinlessness, with which we have dealt in the preceding Section. Here we are concerned only with external or bodily vir- ginity (virgimitas carnis), and, employing the term in this meaning, we affirm that Mary was an inviolate virgin before, during, and after the birth of her Divine Son. Thesis I: Mary was a pure virgin before the birth of Christ. This thesis embodies an article of faith. Proof. The period here under consideration comprises the whole previous life of Our Lady up to the Annunciation, and particularly the mo- ment when she conceived her Divine Son. The dogma embodied in our thesis was impugned by the ancient sects of the Ebionites and Cerin- thians, by the Jews,’ the Socinians, and many 1 Cfr. the Sanhedrin and the Toledoth Jeschuah. 83 84 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES modern Rationalists, e. g., Wegscheider, De Wette, Strauss, Renan, Paulus, Venturini, etc. It is contained in the so-called Apostles’ Creed: “TJesus Christ] was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,” ? and has been echoed by many councils.® a) That Mary was a virgin up to the time when the Angel announced to her the mystery of the Incarnation, is plain from Luke I, 26 sq.: ‘2. the Angel Gabriel was sent from God,. ... to a virgin* espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.’ Her virginity was not violated when she conceived our Lord Jesus Christ.) Luke 1)r3ag:). “The Holy,;Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee.” Cfr. Matth.1I,18: “As his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together ° she was found with child, of the Holy Ghost.” ® Conceived of the Holy Ghost, without the codperation of a human male, Christ was not the son of Joseph, but merely supposed to be such.’ In explanation of the unique miracle of the virgin birth, St. Matthew ® refers to a fa- mous Old Testament prophecy: °® ‘Now all this 2“ Conceptus est de Spiritu 6 etpén ev yaorpt éxovoa ék Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine.” mvevPartos darylov- 3 Cfr. Denzinger-Bannwart, n. T Dake DLA 23: TAA, | 250, 16tC. 8 Matth. I, 22 sq. 4 Virgo, wap0évos. 9Is. VII, 14: “Ecce virgo con- 5 mpiv 7 aouvveNGeiv avrovs. cipiet et’ pariet fiium et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel.” HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY: 85 > was done that it might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying: Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being inter- pretedis, God with us.” Christian Tradition has always taken this passage to refer to the conception and birth of the Messias, because to none other can the name Emmanuel be fitly applied. We know as the result of a complete induction *° that the Hebrew word mop hardly ever means simply “girl ” ‘ (puella, veavs), but almost without exception “ virgin,” in the proper sense of that term (wirgo, map6évos) .** The phrase “a virgin shall be with child” must there- fore be taken in sensu composito, that is, as denoting virginal conception without male cooperation. There would be nothing extraordinary in the prophecy of Isaias if it were interpreted in sensu diviso, 1. é@., as meaning that the virgin who was to be with child was to be a virgin only till the time of her conception, but not theteaiter,+* b) The Fathers are unanimous in teaching that Christ was conceived by a virgin and that the prophecy of Isaias applies to Him. St. Justin Martyr, for example, says: “The words ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child’ mean that the vir- TORG Et OL Vig sh eexop cL Le) 8's planation of Is. VII, 14 consult Ps, LXVIII, 26; Cant. I, 3; VI, 8; Al. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter in Prov. XXX, 18 sq. der Hl. Schrift, pp. 22 sqq. (Engl. 11 St. Ireneus was probably the tr., pp. 28 sqq.); Knabenbauer, first to call attention to this dis- Comment. in Is., VII, 14, . Paris tinction.. (Adv. Haer., III,,. 21; 1887; Maas, Christ in Type and cfr. Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., V, 8). Prophecy, Vol. I, pps 351° -saqa., 12 For a detailed exegetical ex- New York 1893. 86 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES gin shall conceive without fleshly commerce. For had she admitted such commerce, she would no longer be a virgin. But the power of God effected that she conceived as a virgin.” + An ancient image of our Lady in the catacombs (per- haps the oldest that has come down to us from early Christian times) ** shows the prophet Isaias clothed in a pallium, wearing sandals on his feet, and pointing with his right hand to a scroll in his left. At his right isa picture of the Madonna, in sitting posture, with stole and a short veil, holding the infant Jesus in her arms. The whole group is surmounted by an eight-cornered star.” Several of the Fathers illustrate the miraculous concep- tion of our Lord by saying that Mary conceived Him through “ faith.” “It behooved a virgin to bring forth Him who was conceived by His mother’s faith, not by her lust,” says St. Augustine.1* Other Patristic writers develop the beautiful thought that the virginity of Mary, far from being violated, was sealed and consecrated by the conception of her Divine Son. The reasons which St. Thomas *” gives why it was fit that Christ should be conceived by a virgin, may, at least in part, be traced to the writings of the Fathers. They are the following: (1) It was meet that the Heavenly Father should be the sole progenitor of His Divine Son; (2) It was in accord with the purity of Christ’s eternal yéwyo.s in the bosom of the Father that His temporal generation also should be absolutely chaste and holy; (3) It behooved 13 Apol., I. 14,This image was discovered in the Roman catacomb of St. Pris- cilla, A. D. 1851, and probably dates back to the end of the first or the beginning of the second century. 15 Cfr. C. M. Kaufmann, Hand- buch der christlichen Archdologie, p. 362, Paderborn 1905; Scaglia-Na- gengast, The Catacombs of Saint Callistus, p. 67, Rome tort. 16 Enchiridion, n. 34: “De vir- gine nasci oportebat, quem fides matris, non libido conceperat.”’ 17 Summa Theologica, 3a, qu. 28, art. I. HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY 87 the sacred humanity of our Lord to be exempt from the taint of original sin; and (4) The virginal conception of Christ was highly appropriate in view of the chief pur- pose of the Incarnation, which was the regeneration of the human race “ not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” 78 c) From the theological point of view we may adduce the subjoined considerations. Though the Blessed Virgin conceived her Di- vine Son without detriment to her virginity, she was the true spouse of St. Joseph. St. Matthew ’° tells us that Joseph was not merely the fiancé, but the husband of Our Lady. “ Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary,”?° of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” Mark well, the Evangelist does not say: “Joseph begot Jesus.” ?1 Though his mar- riage with the Blessed Virgin was never consummated, St. Joseph was truly “the husband of Mary,” and conse- quently the adoptive and legal father of Jesus. As such he enjoyed all the rights and prerogatives of a true father, e. g., that of naming the child. Cfr. Matth. I, 20, sq.: “ Behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife,?? for that which is con- ceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost; and she shall bring forth a son: and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” ?* This text fur- nishes a key which unlocks for us the deeper meaning 18 Cfr. John I, 13. 22 Coniugem tuam, thy ryuvaike 19 Matth. I, 16. cov. 20Virum Mariae, Trop dvdpa 2eCir,) -Matth. | 1.\) sexo hee as. Mapilas. hizo, sad. 21V. supra, p. 6. 88 MARYS) SF eCiAL IPREROGATIVES of such passages’ as,,Luke [1 33°'"" His: father ** and mother were wondering at those things which were spoken concerning him; ” and Luke II, 48: “ His mother said to him: Son, why hast thou done so to us? Behold, thy father *> and I have sought thee sorrowing.” St. Augustine lays special emphasis on this point. ‘ Jo- seph,” he says, “is said to be the father of Christ in the same way in which he is understood to be the husband of Mary, without carnal intercourse, by the connexion of marriage, that is to say, far more intimately than if he had been adopted in some other way.” 7° In 1892 Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis and her twin sister Mrs. Margaret Dunlop Gibson discovered in the monas- tery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai a palimpsest manu- script of the fourth or fifth century which lacks only about eight pages of the four Gospels. Professor Gregory 7" believes it to be “essentially the earliest Syriac text.” This text renders Matth. I, 16, thus: “ Joseph, to whom was espoused Mary the virgin, begot Jesus, who is called the Messias.” Of course we do not know whether the Syriac translator rendered his Hebrew or Greek original faithfully ; but even if he did, the passage need not neces- sarily be explained as contradicting the virginal con- ception of Our Lord. The term “begot” may be taken in a wider sense as supplying the basis for a legal pa- ternity.?® 24 Pater etus. 25 Pater tuus. 26 De Consensu Evangel., II, 1: “Eo modo pater Christi dicitur Loseph, quo et vir Mariae intelligi- tur sine commixtione carnis, ipsa copulatione coniugu, multo videlicet coniunctius quam si esset aliunde - adoptatus.”” 27C. R. Gregory, Canon and Text of the New Testament, p. 398, New York 1907; cfr. Holzhey, Der neuentdeckte Syrus Sinaiticus, Min- chen 1896. Holzhey’s work con- tains a thorough examination of the Lewis codex, as well as a compari- son of it with Cureton’s text. 28 Cfr. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter sn der Hl, Schrift; p. 21, note 3, (Engl. tr., p. 27, n. 6); M. Seisen- HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY 89. That the Holy Ghost is no more the natural father of Jesus than is St. Joseph, was expressly defined by the Eleventh Council of Toledo (A. D. 675).?? The intrinsic metaphysical reason is this: divine generation can manifest itself outwardly only as generatio aequi- voca (as, for instance, in the process of supernatural regeneration), whereas every true generation is a ge neratio univoca, aiming at the production of a being con- substantial with its progenitor. Such is, e. g., the eternal generation of the Son by the Father; such, too, is all organic generation on earth. The part which the Third Person took in the conception of our Divine Saviour was of the nature of a divine appropriation and consisted in supernaturally supplying the missing male principle and furnishing the impetus necessary for the development of the embryo conceived in the virgin’s womb. *° The great dignity of St. Joseph, which renders him particularly worthy of our veneration, is based on the unique privilege which he enjoyed, of being both the legal father of our Lord and the true husband of His Blessed Mother. Needless to say, he was a just and holy man.** Very properly do the faithful link his name with the sacred names of Jesus and Mary, and place themselves berger, Practical Handbook for the 30Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa Study of the Bible, tr. by A. M. PLeols Ma aw Gin s2eacteny ound cama: Buchanan, pp. 245 sq., New York “ Christus conceptus est de Maria IQII. Virgine materiam ministrante in 29“ Nov& autem nativitate est similitudinem speciet, et ideo dici- genitus, quia intacta virginitas et tur Filius eius. Christus autem se- virtlem coitum nescivit et foecun- cundum quod homo conceptus est data per Spiritum Sanctum carnts de Spiritu Sancto sicut de activo materiam ministravit.... Nec ta- principio, non tamen ~ secundum men Spiritus Sanctus pater esse cre- similitudinem speciet, sicut homo dendus est Filii, pro eo quod Maria nascitur de patre suo, et ideo eodem Sancto Spiritu. obumbrante Christus non dicitur filius Spiritus concepit, ne duos patres Filuvidea- Sancti.” mur asserere, quod utique nefas est 31 6/kavos wy. Matth. I, 19, dici.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, nn, 282.) go MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES under the special protection of the Holy Family, which presents such a perfect model of all virtues. One hun- dred and fifty-three of the Fathers assembled for the Vatican, Council petitioned the Holy See to declare St. Joseph patron of the Universal Church.*? This wish was gratified by Pius IX,°* and the patronage of St. Joseph was reaffirmed and his cult recommended by Leo XIII.** Thesis II: The Blessed Virgin Mary remained an inviolate virgin during parturition. This is likewise an article of faith. Proof. The virginal conception of Our Lord offers less difficulty to the human mind than His virgin birth, for the reason that maternity necessarily presupposes parturition. It is owing to this difficulty that Mary’s wirgimitas im partu has become a dogma logically distinct from her virginitas im conceptione. Its chief opponent in ancient times was the infamous Jovinian, a heretic of the fourth century.*° The fourteenth- 32 Cfr. C. Martin, Conc. Vat. Do- cum. Collectio, p. 214, Paderborn 1873. 83 Decree of Dec. 8, 1870. 84 Encyclical Letter ‘‘ Quamquam pluries,’ of August 15, 1889. On the dogmatic aspects of the part taken by St. Joseph in the economy of the Redemption cfr. Jamar, The- ologia S. Losephi, Louvain 1898. On. the historic development of the devotion to the foster-father of our Lord, see J. Seitz, Die Verehrung des hi. Joseph in threr geschicht- lichen Entwicklung bis zum Konzil von Trient, Freiburg 1908; Kellner, Heortology, pp. 272 sqq., London 1908; Ricard, S. Joseph, sa Vie et son Culte, Lille 1896; C. L. Souvay, art. ‘Joseph, Saint” in the Catho- lic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII. On the history of the dogma of Christ’s vir- gin birth cfr. Durand-Bruneau, The Childhood of Jesus Christ according to the Canonical Gospels, pp. 45 sqq., Philadelphia 1910. 35 Our information about Jovinian is principally derived from St. Jerome’s two books, Adversus Jo- vinianum. Cfr. Haller, Jovinianus, die Fragmente seiner Schriften, die Quellen zu seiner Geschichte, sein Leben und seine Lehre, Leipzig 1897. HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY Qt century Lollards likewise held that the Blessed Virgin gave birth to her Son just as any ordi- nary mother. Modern Rationalists and infidel Bible critics quite naturally have nothing but scorn for the dogma of the virgin birth. Jovinian was condemned as a heretic by Pope Siricius at a council held in Rome, A. D. 390. The bishops of Italy and Gaul convoked in Milan by St. Ambrose solemnly declared: “Perversely they assert that she [Mary] conceived as a virgin but was no longer a virgin when she brought forth [her Son] . .. But if men will not believe the teaching of the priests, let them believe the pronouncements of Christ, let them believe the Apostles’ Creed [‘He was born of the Virgin Mary’], which the Church has always guarded and continues to preserve.” *° a) The Gospel narrative of the birth of our Divine Saviour contains nothing either to prove or to disprove His virgin birth.*” However, the dogma has sufficient Scriptural warrant in the prophecy of Isaias. In the sentence: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,” *® the consequent (“a virgin will bear a son’”’), like the antecedent (“‘a virgin will conceive”), must mani- 86“ De via perversitatis produn- virgine], quod ecclesia Romana in- tur dicere: Virgo concepit, sed non temeraium semper custodivit et virgo generavit.... Sed si doc- servat.” trinis non creditur sacerdotum, ~cre- 87 Cfr. Luke II, 5 sqq. datur oraculis Christi, credatur sym-: 88Is, VII, 14: ‘“‘ Ecce virgo con- bolo penne [scil. naius de Maria cipiet et pariet Filiwm,” 92 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES festly be taken in sensu composito.? In other words, “a virgin will bear a son” means that she will remain a virgin though bearing a son.*? A passage in Ezechiel is interpreted as referring typically to the virgin birth. “And the Lord said to me: This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it: because the Lord God of Israel hath entered {DY ME Nee dire An apparent difficulty arises from the Scriptural ac- count of the Presentation. Luke II, 22 sq.: “After the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried him to Jerusalem to pre- sent him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord: Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.” 42. The sacred writer here seems to put Mary on a level with ordinary mothers. But in matter of fact he merely cites a provision of the Mosaic law, to which the Mother of God conformed in all humility and obedience, despite the fact that the physiological suppo- sitions did not exist in her case. We must remember that the law of Moses was made for the common run of humanity, not for the exceptional few. We must also note that the presentation of the Christ-child in the Tem- 39 See Thesis I, supra. 40 “ Mater inviolata’’ (Litany of Loreto). 41 Ezech. XLIV, 2: “ Porta haec clausa erit, non aperietur et vir non transibit per eam, quoniam Dominus Deus Israel ingressus est per eam.” On the traditional exegesis of this text cfr. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter, pp. 56 sqq. (Engl. tr., pp. 63 sqq.) 42 Et postquam impleti sunt dies purgationis eius (at Huepar TOU Kadapiopov) secundum legem Moysi, tulerunt illum in Ierusalem, ut sisterent eum Domino, sicut scriptum est in lege Domini: Quia omne masculinum adaperiens vulvam (Suavoiyor pntpav) sanctum Do- mina vocabitur.” HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY 93 ple is accounted for, not by the apertio vulvae et purgatio sanguinis, but by the Mosaic requirement that every first- born infant should be consecrated to the Lord. As Jesus was the first-born son of His virgin mother, He had to be presented in the Temple and consecrated to God according to the law.** b) Tradition unmistakably attests Mary’s virgimitas in partu, in fact there is not a single Father who can be said to be uncertain in his at- titude towards this question. a) The nineteenth among the “ Odes and Psalms of Solomon,” lately rediscovered by Rendel Harris,** ex- presses belief in the virgin birth. As these Odes in their present form are probably the work of a Jewish-Chris- tian who lived about A.D. 70, the passage to which we refer may be regarded as the most ancient extra- biblical testimony to the dogma of the wrginitas in partu. It reads as follows: ‘‘ The Virgin’s body sprouted and she conceived and gave birth without pain to a Son; and by the fact that He became nought [humbled Himself] she received aplenty [became rich] and she asked not for a midwife; for He made her to live.” * St. Am- brose declares: “ The prophet Ezechiel *® says that he saw the building of a city upon a very high mountain. The’city had many gates. Of these one is described as shut. What is this gate but Mary? And shut because a virgin. Mary, then, is the gate through which Christ 43 Cfr. proposition number 24 tione et quod Filius (qui offereba- among the Propositiones damnatae tur) etiam maculé matris maculatus ab Alexandro VIII, d. 7. Dec. 1690 esset, secundum verba legis.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, mn. 1314): 44 Published at Cambridge, 1909. * Oblatio in templo.... sufficienter 45 Odes of Solomon, verses 6-8. testatur, quod indiguerit purtfica- 46 Ezech, XLIV, 2, 94 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES came into this world, when he was shed forth by a vir- ginal birth, without loosing the bars of virginity. The inclosure of purity remained unscathed, and the seals of integrity were kept inviolate, as He went forth from the virgin. ... A good gate is Mary, that was closed, and was not opened. By her Christ passed, but He opened not.” 47 St. Augustine thus descants on the miraculous character of this supernatural process: “The same power evolved the body of the infant from the virginal viscera of the inviolate mother, which afterwards con- ducted the body of the grown-up youth through locked doors. If we ask for the reason, it is not miraculous; if we demand an example, it is not singular. Let us grant that God can do something which we may as well admit we cannot fathom. In such matters the sole reason for a fact is the power of Him who causes it.” 48 We will conclude the argument by a quotation from Pope Hormisdas (514-523): “The child by the power of God did not open his mother’s womb nor destroy her virginity. It was in truth a mystery worthy of the God who was born, that He who wrought the conception with- out seed, preserved the birth from corruption.” * 47 St. Ambrose, De Insiit. Virg., Villines ee: otic Oude estnaec porta nist Maria? Ideo clausa, quia virgo. Portaigitur Maria, per quam Christus intravit in hune mundum, quando virginali fusus est partu et genitalia vtirginitatis clausira non soluit. Mansit intemeratum septum pudoris et inviolata integritatis du- ravere signacula.... Bona porta Maria, quae clausa erat et non aperiebatur, transivit per eam Chri- stus, sed non aperuit.” 48) Fibs wi37 1Gd | AV Olus., LL, 18s “Tpsa virtus per inviolatae matris virginea viscera membra infantis eduxit, quae postea per clausa ostia membra iuvenis introduxit. Hic st ratio quaeritur, non erit mirabile; st exemplum poscitur, non erit singu- lare. Demus Deum aliquid posse, quod nos fateamur investigare non posse: in talibus rebus tota ratio , factt est potentia facientis.” 49 Ep. 79 ad ITustin.: “ Matris vulvam natus non aperiens et vir- ginitatem matris dettatis virtute non solvens. Dignum plane Deo na- scentis mysterium, ut servaret par- tum sine corruptione, qui conceptum fecit esse sine semine.” HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY 95 _ The Fathers employ a number of beautiful analogies to elucidate the dogma of the virgin birth. Thus they point to the spotless generation of the Logos in the bosom of the Father; to the genesis of thought in the spiritual soul; to the passage of light through a glass; to Christ’s triumphant resurrection from a sealed tomb, His passing through locked doors, and so forth. 8) There are only two among the early Christian writers, Origen and Tertullian,®° who can be accused of false teaching in regard to the virgin birth. They were misled by a mistaken regard for the motherhood of our Lady, and partly also by a misapprehension of Luke II, 22. A few ecclesiastical writers employ the expres- sion “vulva aperta,’ but the context shows (especially when they argue against Docetism) that, far from deny- ing the virginal character of Christ’s birth, they merely mean to assert its reality. c) It is a certain theological conclusion that the Blessed Virgin was spared the throes of child-birth. St. Jerome quotes Sacred Scripture in support of this pious belief. ‘ There was no obstetrician there,” he says, “there were no sedulous women attendants. ... She ‘wrapped Him up in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger.” ®t St. John of Damascus. testifies to the belief of the Greeks that “no pleasure preceded this de- livery, no birth-throes accompanied it.”*? St. Bernard 50 Tertullian says (De Carne 51 Contra Helvid., c. 4: “ Nulla Christi, c. 23): “Et virgo quan- ibi obstetrix, nulla muliercularum tum a viro, et non virgo quantum _ sedulitas intercessit. . . . Pannis, in- a partu. ... Etsi virgo concepit, in quit, involuit infantem et posuit in partu suo nupsit ipsa, patefactad praesepio.” corporis lege.” 52De Fide Orih., IV, 15: “oo 96 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES observes that Christ’s conception “ was without reproach and His birth without pain.” *° Thesis III: The Blessed Mary remained a virgin after the birth of her Divine Son. This thesis likewise embodies an article of faith. Proof. Though married, our Lady preserved her virginity till death. The same is true of St. Joseph, who as St. Jerome ‘remarks, “was Mary’s protector rather than her husband, and like her, led a celibate life.’ °* This dogma was impugned in the early days by a sect called Antidicomarianites,” in the fourth and fifth centuries by Helvidius, Jovinian, and Bonosus, and in modern times by Th. Zahn °° and other rationalist theologians. The Council of Capua (A.D. 389) denounced Bonosus as a her- etic; his false teaching was censured at about the same time (A.D. 390) by synods held in Rome and Milan against Jovinian. The dog- matic term ever-virgin (demapOevos, semper virgo), which had been coined early in the history of the Church, was incorporated in the Creed by the quam nativitatem nulla voluptas anteivit nec dolor quidem in partu nullus fuit dolor, sicut nec aliqua corruptio.”” (Summa Theol., 3a, qu. secutus est.” 53 Serm. de Virg. Nativitate, 4: “ Conceptus fuit sine pudore, partus sine dolore.’—St. Thomas states the intrinsic reason of this phenom- enon as follows: ‘‘ Christus egres- sus est ex clauso utero matris et sic nulla violentia apertionis meatuum sbi fuit, et propter hoc in illo party 35,(.art..6.) 54 Contra Helvid., 19: ‘“‘ Mariae, custos potius fuit quam maritus; re- linquitur, virginem eum mansisse cum Maria,.”’ 55 Gr. avrldixot Maplas. 56 Briider und Vettern Jesu, Leipzig 1900. HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY 97 Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, A. D. 553.7 The essential elements of the dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity are severally em- phasized by the Lateran Council of 649, which says: “If any one refuse to confess, in accord- ance with the holy Fathers, that Mary was prop- erly speaking and of a truth the holy mother of God and always an immaculate virgin . . . that she conceived of the Holy Ghost without seed and gave birth without corruption, her virginity re- maining inviolate also after parturition, let him be anathema.” ®* The Sixth Ecumenical Coun- cil of Constantinople (A. D. 680) expresses this truth more tersely as follows: “The virginity of Mary ... remained before, during, and after panuiritiony (5. a) Mary’s virginitas post partum cannot be cogently proved from Sacred Scripture, but the dogma is deducible with moral certainty from the fact that she had resolved to remain a virgin all her life. It was this resolution which inspired her timid query: “How shall this be done, because [ 57“... qui de coelis descendit et incarnatus de sancta gloriosa Det sanctam sempberque virginem imma- culatam Mariam. ... absque semine genitrice et semper virgine Maria (ék Hs aylas évddtov BeoTdKou Kal devrapOevov Maplas), natus est ex ea (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 214.) 58“ Si quis secundum sanctos pa- tres non confitetur proprie et se- cundum veritatem Det genitricem concepisse ex Spiritu Sancto et tn- corruptibiliter eam genuisse indisso- lubili permanente et post parium eiusdem virginitate, condemnatus sit.’ (Denzinger-Bannwart, n, 256.) 59 Mariae illibata _—-virginitas, quae ante partum, in partu et post partum est interminabilis,” 98 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES know not man?” °° Only after the Angel had as- sured her that her chastity would remain intact, did she consent to become the mother of Jesus: “Be it done to me according to thy word.” * a) Some of the Fathers (SS. Gregory of Nyssa, Am- brose,** and Augustine **) held that Mary was bound by a vow of perpetual virginity. Suarez does not hesitate to call this “the Catholic view.” * It is confirmed by the fact that Jesus, when dying on the Cross, entrusted His mother to the care of St. John.°° “The words ‘ Be- hold thy son,” says the Protestant exegete Hengsten- berg, “indicate that Mary had no other sons besides Jesus. To honor one’s parents by faithfully providing for them is not only the duty but the right of every child, and Jesus would have violated the rights of His brethren, had he had any, by entrusting His mother to John.” % 8B) All Antidicomarianite heretics since Bonosus have appealed to those well-known passages of the New Tes- tament in which mention is made of the “brethren” of Jesus.°* It is to be noted, however, that these “ brethren ” are nowhere referred to as sons of Mary. Jesus alone is called the son of Mary. So long as the Rationalists do not bring proof to show that “brethren of Jesus” is synonymous with “sons of Mary,” their assertion is gra- tuitous. 60 Luke I, 34. 67 Das Evangelium des hl. Jo- 61 Luke I, 38. hannes, Vol. III, p. 267, Leipzig 62 In Nat. Domini (Migne, P. G., 1863. XLVI, 311). 68 Cir. Matth. XII, 46; XIII, 55; 63 De Instit. Virg., V, 35. Mark III, 31 sq.; VI, 3; Luke VIII, 64 De Sanct. Virginit., n. 4. 20; John II,.12; VII, 3 sqq.; Acts 65 De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. ira hGalt Tin, 6, sect. 2. Cir. St. Thomas, Summa 69 6 vids Mapias. Cfr. Mark Theol., 3a, qu. 28, art. 4. Vigne: 66 Cfr. John XIX, 26 sqq. a a ee ee HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY 99 - But what does the Gospel mean when it speaks of the “brethren of Jesus”? Were they perhaps sons of St. Joseph by a previous marriage? This explanation was suggested by St. Epiphanius,”° but has been generally rejected since the time of St. Jerome, (1) because it is based on apocryphal sources and (2) because the universal belief of Christians is and has always been that St. Joseph, like his holy spouse, abstained from carnal inter- course throughout his life.*_ A simpler explanation, now generally accepted is, that since the term “ brother ” 7 is used in both Testaments as a synonym for “ kinsman” (nephew, cousin, etc.),"? the so-called ‘brethren of Jesus”? were probably near relatives of His Blessed Mother. We know this for certain in the case of three among the four who are enumerated by name as His brethren. St. Matthew records the query: “Is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Jude?” And, indeed, there appears under the Cross, as the “ mother of Jacob and Joseph,” a certain Mary * who, according to St. John, was identical with the wife of Cleophas and is expressly designated as a “sister”? (which probably means “cousin” ) of the - Blessed Virgin.*® Hence St. James the Less, who is em- phatically called “the brother of the Lord,” 7? was a son 72 Frater, ddedpos. TO Chr y Gembinnd Den» sie on Pag ai XXIX, «5, and, in explanation thereof, Lamy,: Comment. in Gen., 13, 8, Mechlin 1883. 74 Matth. XIII, 55. 75 Cfr. Matth. XXVII, 56. 76 Cfr, John XIX, 25: “ Stabant autem iuxta crucem Iesu mater eius 70“ Ceterum LIosephus primam e tribu Inudae coniugem habumt, ex qua sex liberos suscepit, mares quatuor, feminas duas.’ (Haer., 78, 7.) 71 Cfr. St. Jerome, Contr. Hel- vid., c. 9: “ Tu dicis Mariam vir- ginem non permansisse; ego nul plus vindico, etiam ipsum LIoseph virginem fuisse per Mariam, ut ex virginali coniugio virgo filius nasce- retur.’ Further details in Bucce- toni, Comment. de SS. Corde TIesu, de B. Virgine et de S. Iosepho, pp. 228 sqq., Rome 1896. et soror matris eius, Maria Cleophae (Mapia 4 rou KAwra) et Maria Magdalene.” TGA TAT. too.) MARY’S, SPECIAL PREROGATIVES of Cleophas and Mary, not of Joseph and Mary. That this “ Iacobus Cleophae”’ is elsewhere called ‘“ Iacobus Alphei’” is presumably due to the circumstance that KAora and *AAdaios are merely two different Greek forms of the same Aramaic name. Now, if St. James the Less was a son of Cleophas (alias Alphzeus), it follows that his brother Joseph, (who is also numbered among the “brethren of Jesus’), was not a son of Joseph and Mary. St. Jude, too, who introduces himself in his Epistle as “the brother of James,” was probably a cousin of our Lord.78 y) Another difficulty against the dogma of the per- petual virginity of Our Lady is taken from Matth. [5 18: “ When his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child, of the Holy Ghost.” 7 “Came together” (convenirent) in this case probably means, “ dwelled together under the same roof.” But even if the term were used in the sense of marital intercourse,“ the zpiv or zpw 7% with infinitive, which fol- lows, indicates either that the act was not performed or that its performance is regarded as of secondary im- portance.” ®° “From the phrase ‘before they came to- gether’ it does not follow,” says St. Jerome, “that they came together afterwards; Holy Scripture merely inti- 78 Cfr. J. Friedlieb, Das Leben Jesu Christi des Erloésers, pp. 325 sqq., Paderborn 1887. There are other acceptable explanations. Con- Jakobusbrief, pp. 6-54, Freiburg 1905. A good summary of the problem in English will be found in the appendix to Durand-Bruneau, sult on this topic especially Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 5, sect. 4; also Schegg, Jakobus der Bruder des Herrn und sein Brief, p. 53, Miinchen 1883. The whole subject is treated with thoroughness by Al. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutier in der Hl. Schrift, pp. 79 sqq. (Engl. tr., pp. 85 saqq.). Against Zahn see M. Meinertz, Der The Childhood of Jesus Christ ac- cording to the Canonical Gospels, pp. 259-316, Philadelphia 1910. 79 ““ Quum esset desponsata mater eius Maria lIoseph, antequam con- venirent (amply ) ouvedOely avTovs) inventa est in utero habens de Spiritu Sancto.” 80 Cfr. Al. Schaefer, Die Goties- mutter, p. 76 (Engl. tr., p. 82). HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY Tot mates what did not happen.” ®t Writing against Helvi- dius, the same Saint cleverly argues ad hominem in this fashion: “If I say: ‘Helvidius died before he did penance for his sins,’ does it follow that he did penance after his death?” * 8) Still another text tiesed against the dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity is Matth. I, 25: “And he [Joseph] knew her [Mary] not till she brought forth her firstborn son.” ®* Helvidius heretically concluded from this statement that Joseph “knew” (i. e., had marital intercourse with) his spouse after she had brought forth her firstborn son. St. Jerome demonstrates the absurdity of this inference by pointing to such analogous texts as Ps. CIX, 1: “ Sit thou at' my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool,’ and Gen. VIII, 6 sq.: “., the raven... did not return till the waters were dried up upon the earth.” Does it follow, he asks, that Christ will no longer sit at the right hand of God the Father when His enemies lie defeated at His feet? Or did the raven return to the ark after the waters were dried up? But does not the term “firstborn” imply that Mary gave birth to more children than one? Not at all, for, as St. Jerome points out, the Scriptures ** frequently em- ploy the word “ firstborn ” to denote a mother’s first child, no matter whether it is followed by others or remains the only one.®° 81 In Matth., I, 18 (Migne, P. L., XXVI, 24): “ Quod autem dicitur antequam convenirent, non sequitur quod postea convenerint, sed Scrip- tura, quod factum non sit, ostendit.”’ 82 In Matth., I, 18 saqq. 83°. Et non cognoscebat eam, donec peperit (€ws ob érexev) flium suum primogenitum (roy mpwrtdTo- Kov).” 84 Cfr. Ex. XXXIV, 19 Sd-» Num. DEVAS 85 St. Jerome, apud Migne, P. L., XXVI, 25: ‘ Mos est divinarum scripturarum, ut primogenitum non eum vocent, quem fratres sequun- tur, sed eum qui primus natus est.” to2 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES b) The belief in Mary’s virginitas post partum, or, more generally speaking, her perpetual vir- ginity, is so firmly rooted in primitive Tradition that the Fathers regard its denial as an insult to our Lord Himself. Siricius and Bede indignantly charge the op- ponents of this dogma with “perfidy ;’ Gennadius accuses them of “blasphemy,” St. Ambrose of “sacrilege,” St. Jerome of “impiety,” and St. Epiphanius of “a rashness exceeding all bounds.” St. Basil declares: “Those who love Christ will not brook the assertion that the Mother of God ever ceased to be a virgin.” *° St. Ambrose en- thusiastically exclaims: “But Mary did not fail, the mistress of virginity did not fail; nor was it possible that she who had borne God, should be regarded as bearing a man. And Joseph, the just man, assuredly did not so completely lose his mind as to seek carnal intercourse with the mother of God.” ** St. Jerome appeals in support of the dogma to Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Irenzeus, Justin Martyr, and other sub-Apostolic Fathers.™ Mary is venerated as ever-virgin (demapfevos) in contra Helvid., 17: “ Numquid non possum tibi totam veterum scripto- rum seriem commovere: Ignatium, 86 Hom. in Chr. Gener., 25- 87 De Inst. Virg., V1, 44: “ Sed non deficit Maria, non deficit vir- ginitatis magistra; nec fiert poterat, ut quae Deum portaverat, portandum hominem arbitraretur. Nec Ioseph, vir iustus, in hanc prorupisset amen- tiam, ut matri Domini corporeo concubitu misceretur.” 88 De Perpet. Virginit. B. Mariae Polycarpum, Ireneum, Iustinum M. multosque alios apostolicos et elo- \ quentes viros, qui adversus Ebionem et Theodotum.... haec eadem sen- tientes plena sapientiae volumina conscripserunt? Quae si legisses aliquando, plus saperes.” HER PERPETUAL VIRGINITY 103 > the earliest liturgies,®*® and this title of honor evi- dently supposes that she remained a virgin all her life. It is in this sense that St. Augustine says in one of his sermons: “Behold the miracle of the Mother of our Lord: She conceived as a vir- gin, she gave birth as a virgin, she remained a virgin aiter child-birth.” °° St. Thomas enumerates four principal reasons why it was morally necessary that the Blessed Virgin Mary should preserve perpetual virginity. These reasons are: (1) The unique character of Christ as the Only-begotten Son of God; (2) The honor and dignity of the Holy Ghost, who over- shadowed her virginal womb; (3) The excellency of the title Deipara, and (4) The honor and chivalry of St. Joseph, who was commissioned to be the protector and guardian of his chaste spouse.°* ReEaApincs : — See the Readings following Section 1, pp. 35 saq., supra, and in addition: St. Thomas, S. Theol., 3a, qu. 28, art. 1-4, and the commentators, especially Billuart, De Myst. Christi, diss. 1, art. 3 sqq., and Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 5, sect. I sqq. The teaching of the Fathers is copiously expounded by Peta- vius, De Incarnatione, XIV, 3 sqq. and Thomassin, De Incarna- tione, II, 3 sqq. Cfr. also *Reinke, Die Weissagung von der Jungfrau und vom Immanuel, Minster 1848; Galfano, La Vergine delle Vergim, 89 Cfr. Renaudot, Vol. I, pp. 18, peperit, virgo post partum perman- AANA hl sy LEO. sit.’ (Serm. de Temb., 23.) 190 “‘ Videte miraculum Matris 91 Summa Theologica, 3a, qu. 28, dominicae: virgo concepit, virgo art. 3. 1o4 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES Palermo 1882.—- Franzelin, De Verbo Incarnato, thes. 15, 4th ed., Rome 1910.—*Al. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter in der HI. Schrift, 2nd ed., pp. 11 sqq., Minster 1900 (English translation by F. Brossart, The Mother of Jesus in Holy Scripture, pp. 17 sqq., New York 1913).— J. H. Newman, Select Treatises of St. Atha- nasius, Vol. II, pp. 204 sqq., 9th ed., London 1903.— E. Neubert, Marie dans lEglise Anténicéenne, pp. 159-208, Paris 1908.— B. J. Otten, S. J., A Manial of the History of Dogmas, Vol. 1, St. Louis I917, pp. 442 sqq. SECTION 4 MARY’S BODILY ASSUMPTION INTO HEAVEN The doctrine of our Lady’s bodily Assumption was brought prominently forward by a petition submitted to the Vatican Council, in 1870, by 204 Bishops, asking that this pious belief be defined as an article of faith." The Assumption, conse- quently, is not yet a dogma, though Suarez says that “whoever would impugn this pious and reli- gious belief would be held guilty of extreme rash- ness.” ? To-day, when so many ancient docu- ments are recognized as spurious, this judgment is, perhaps, too severe. I. THE DeatH oF Our Lapy.—History tells us nothing about the time when our Lady died or the circumstances of her death. Nor do we know where she was buried. Scripture is silent on all these points and the oldest extant accounts are based entirely on apocryphal sources. Though some theologians have denied the reality of Our Lady’s death,? it has been a matter of uni- versal belief from primitive times. 1 Cfr. Martin, Conc. Vat. Docu- osamque sententiam hodie impugna- ment. Collectio, p. 112, Paderborn _ ret.” 1873. 3 E. g., Arnaldus, Super Transitu 2De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 21, B. Mariae Virginis Deiparae, Genoa sect 2: “‘ Summae temeritatis reus 1879; against him Berdani in the crederetur, qui tam piam religi- Scuola Cattolica, Milan 1880. 105 106 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES a) As we have already observed, there is no historical argument to prove the fact. In the fourth century, St. Epiphanius, after a careful investigation of the available evidence, confessed himself unable to arrive at a definite conclusion.* Nor have we any certain knowledge regard- ing the date of our Lady’s demise or the place of her bur- ial. Pseudo-Dionysius’ account ® of a miraculous meeting of the Apostles at her deathbed is merely a pious legend, which can claim no greater credence than the stories circulated at an early date regarding the death and al- leged resurrection of the Master’s favorite disciple, Saint John.6 The recent controversy between Fonck and Nirschl as to whether the Blessed Virgin died at Ephesus or Jerusalem, has led to no positive results, and we must still acknowledge with Billuart that both opinions are equally probable.*. The belief that our Lady died rests on the law of the universality of death, from which not even the Godman Himself was exempt.® b) Since the sixth century the death of the Blessed Virgin is commemorated in the liturgies on August 15th. The Sacramentary of Pope Gregory I (540-604) con- tains this passage: ‘‘ To-day’s festival is venerable to us, O Lord, because on this day the blessed Mother of God 4De Haer., 78, n. 11: “ Neque 1887; Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrol- aut immortalem perseverasse definio, aut, utrum mortua sit, confirmare possum, . «. Sive igitur mortua sit nescimus, sive consepulta sit.” 5 De Divine Nom., c. 3. 6Cfr. C. Tischendorff, Apoca- lypses Apocryphae, item Mariae Dormitio, pp. 95 sqq., Lipsiae 1866; Lipsius, Apokryphe Apostelgeschich- ten und Abpostellegenden, Leipzig ogy, pp. 113 saq., Freiburg 1908. 7 De Myst. Christi, diss. 14, art. 1: “Quo loco obierit Deipara, an Ephesi, an Ierosolomis, definirt non potest propter probabilitatem utri- usque sententiae.” 8 See the dogmatic treatise on Eschatology. Cfr. Jos. Nirschl, Das Haus und Grab der hl. Jungfrau Maria, Mainz 1900. HER ASSUMPTION suffered temporal death, but it was not possible that she who gave birth to our incarnate Lord, Thy Son, should be subjugated by death.”® HER ASSUMPTION Ti ending bliss of eternity.” ** The Patriarch Modestus, who preceded St. Sophronius as Bishop of Jerusalem (+ 634), left a panegyric on the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin under the title: “Eyxwpuov eis ryv ~ / ~ , \ ld koiunow THs tmepayias Seoroivys judv OeordKov Kal deapHevov Mapias.*° Our most important witnesses are St. Andrew of Crete (+ 720), St. Germanus, Patriarch of Byzantium (+ 733), and especially St. John of Damascus (died after 754). Damascene’s three homilies on the Dormitio (cis thy kolynow), written for the Feast of the Assumption, “present the bodily Assumption of the Mother of God into Heaven as an ancient heirloom of Catholic faith, and declare that their sole purpose is to develop and estab- lish what in a brief and almost too concise a manner the son has inherited from the father, according to jhe Le we common saying.” *° fe How the Greeks conceived the Dormitio of the Blessed Virgin appears from a panegyric composed for the fifteenth of August by St. Theodore Studita (about 759- 826). “The true mountain of Sion,’ he says, “on which, as the Psalmist sings, God condescended to dwell, migrates from among these terrestrial hills and ap- proaches the celestial mountains. To-day the terrestrial heaven, clothed in the garb of immutability, is trans- planted to a better and eternal habitation. To-day the divinely-illumined spiritual moon ascends towards the sun of justice and takes leave of this life to re-arise in the splendor of immortality. To-day the golden shrine 38“ Dominus susceptum corpus (Mirac., I, 4, apbud Migne, P. Ty sanctum [Mariae mortuae] in nube LXXI, 708.) deferri iussit in paradisum, ubs 39 Reprinted in Migne, P. G., nunc resumpta anima cum electis LXXXVI, 2, 3277 sqq. eius exsultans aeternitatis bonis 40 Bardenhewer-Shahan, Pairol- nullo occasuris fine perfruitur.’ ogy, p. 588 118 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES which God Himself made is removed from the terrestrial tents to the heavenly Jerusalem.” * y) Is the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin a veritas proxime defimibilis? In regard to this question opinions may legitimately differ. Possibly the develop- ment and solidification of the dogmatic basis of this doc- trine will yet require prolonged labor on the part of Catholic theologians. A long step forward has been taken by setting aside the historic method and basing the argument on strictly dogmatic grounds. The theological as well as the Scriptural argument seem in this question to have but a secondary and subsidiary value, and the case for the Assumption rests mainly on an ecclesiastical tradition which has all the distinguishing characteristics of Apostolicity. In our humble opinion the argument from tradition is so strong that the formal definition of the Assumption is but a question of time. The opportune- ness of a solemn definition will hardly be disputed. Perhaps the Church will see fit to obviate certain dif- ficulties by formally defining the bodily Assumption of Our Lady and leaving her physical death to be taught as a theological conclusion. The definition of the Assump- tion would be the last jewel in the crown of Our Blessed Lady. Reapincs:— Billuart, De Myst. Christi, diss. 14, art. I-2— Gaudin, Assumptio Corporea Mariae Virginis Vindicata, Paris 1670.— *Morgott, Die Mariologie des hl. Thomas, pp. 117 sqq., Freiburg 1878.—*Agostino Lana, La Resurrezione e Corporea Assunzione al Cielo della S. Vergine Madre di Dio, Rome 1880. — Vaccari, De B. Virginis Mariae Morte, Resurrectione et in Coelos Gloriosa Assumptione, 2d ed., Ferrari 1881.— *Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. III, § 281, Freiburg 1882.— Jannucci, Firmitudo 41 For the full text of this pic- Dogmat., Vol. IV, 3rd ed., pp. 349 turesque panegyric see Migne, P, sqq., Freiburg 1909. G3 CVIL) ts9.) Cir. Peseh) Prael. HER ASSUMPTION 119° Catholicae Veritatis de Psychosomatica Assumptione Deiparae, Turin 1884.— Bucceroni, Commentarii ... de B. Virgine Mania, 4th ed., pp. 193 sqq., Rome 1896.—Chr. Pesch, Praelectiones Dogmaticae, Vol. IV, 3rd ed., pp. 349 sqq., Freiburg 1909.— G. B. Tepe, Institutiones Theologicae, Vol. lil, pp. 721 sqq., Paris 1896.— M. J. Spalding, Miscellanea, Vol. II, pp. 736-748, Baltimore 1892— B. L. Conway, Studies in Church History, pp. 71 sqq., post Louis 1915.— Di Pietro, L’Assunzione di Maria in Cielo secondo la Storia e la Tradizione, S. Benigno Cavanese 1903.—F. G. Hol- weck, Marié Himmelfahrt, St. Louis 1910—F. O'Neill, “The Assumption of the Bl. Virgin according to the Teaching of Pius IX and St. Thomas,” in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 44th year, No. 524, pp. 113-136.— P. Renaudin, La Doctrine de lAssomp- tion de la T. S. Vierge, Sa Definibilité comme Dogme de Fo Divine Catholique, Paris 1913— B. J. Otten, S. J.. 4 Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. 1, St. Louis 1917, pp. 447 sa. On the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary, cfr. Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 21, sect. 1 sqq.; Canisius, De Maria Virgine, V, 3 sqq., Ingolstadt 1577; Benedict XIV, De Festis Beatae Mariae Virginis, II, 8; Arnaldus, Super Transitu B. Mariae Virginis Deiparae, Genoa 1879; J. Nirschl, Das Grab der hl. Jungfrau Maria, Mainz 1896. CTIAP ERA THE POSITIVE PREROGATIVES OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN In the preceding Chapter we have dealt with what are generally called the negative privileges of the Blessed Virgin Mary. These same privileges may also, ina sense, be conceived as positive, in so far, namely, as they con- stitute her an ideal human being and consist in a series of special graces; but essentially they are negative, because they denote the absence of some defect (priwatio, oré- pyois). Our Lady’s positive privileges, properly so called, are: (1) secondary mediatorship and (2) hyperdulic venerabil- ity. {20 SECTION: MARY’S SECONDARY MEDIATORSHIP I. STATE OF THE QueEsTION.—In calling the Blessed Virgin mediatrix we do not mean to deny that Jesus Christ is our sole Mediator.". The mediation of Mary rests entirely upon that of her Divine Son and would be utterly ineffective with- out it. a) Christ, who is our sole and natural Mediator, ob- tained the power of mediation for His Blessed Mother by His death on the Cross. Hence to acknowledge Mary as our mediatrix does not detract from the mediatorship of Jesus, as most Protestants allege, but confirms that dogma and leads to a higher estimation of it. As the fatherhood of God loses nothing through the co-exist- ence with it of an earthly fatherhood, and as the sov- ereignty of mundane princes does not detract from, but rather emphasizes and confirms the dominion of the almighty Ruler of heaven and earth, so the derived me- diatorship of the Blessed Virgin Mary does not derogate from, but adds new lustre to, that of her Divine Son. The former is subordinate to the latter as an instrumental to a principal cause, and it stands to reason that the mediatorial operation of Christ increases in the same measure in which it employs the agency of mediate or. instrumental causes and endows these with efficiency. 1Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Soteriology, Pp. 5 sqq. 121 i222 MARY’S SPECIAL; PREROGATIVES b) This must be our guiding principle in defining the mediatorship of Mary. Unfortunately, theologians, ascetic writers, and preachers have not always used due caution in this matter. Some have attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary certain honorary titles which are apt to obscure the dogmatic teaching of the Church in regard to the sole mediatorship of Our Lord. We are perfectly willing to allow for rhetorical exaggeration; but zeal for the honor of the Blessed Virgin should not lead theo- logians to neglect their plain duty of safeguarding the Person and the work of the Redeemer. The following three propositions may serve as guiding principles in this matter: a) Jesus Christ is our sole Mediator per se. 8) The mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is en- tirely secondary and subordinate to that of her Divine Son. y) Since, however, Mary is the Mother of God, her mediatorship transcends that of all the angels and saints and consequently constitutes an altogether unique priv- ilege. c) In consonance with these principles Fathers and theologians very properly style our Lady liberatrix, salva- trix, reparatrix, restauratrix, reconciliatrix, and co- operatrix or socia Redemptoris. But it would be wrong to call her redemptrix, because this title obscures the im- portant truth that she herself was redeemed through the merits of Jesus Christ by what theologians technically term preredemption.? Even the title coredemptrix had better be avoided as misleading. The titles redemptrix and coredemptrix were never applied to the Blessed Vir- gin before the sixteenth century; they are the invention of 2V. supra, p. 41. HER SECONDARY) MEDIATORS HIP. 134 - comparatively recent writers (Castelplanio, Faber, P. Minges, O. F. M.,° and others). There is another class of honorary titles sometimes applied to Mary, which imply the exercise of priestly functions, e. g., sacerdotissa, consacerdotissa, or high priestess. These, too, should be avoided, for the Blessed Virgin was not commissioned to perform sacerdotal func- tions, nor did she ever claim hierarchic rights. At the most we might call her Deaconess of Christ (diaconissa Christi), because she ministered to our Divine Saviour in the work of Redemption and humbly professed her- self “a handmaid of the Lord.”* The safest course is to follow the approved usage of the Church (e. g., in the “Salve Regina” and the Litany of Loreto), which agrees with that of the Fathers and all sober-minded Scholastics, and to interpret occasional exaggerations and symbolic appellations in accordance with the dogmatic teaching of the Church. d) The term which most appropriately and compre- hensively describes our Blessed Lady’s part in the Re- demption is undoubtedly mediatrix, which is sanctioned by primitive Christian usage and embodies all that can be said on the subject. 2. Docmatic Proor.—The Blessed Virgin Mary deserves to be called by the ancient tradi- tional title of mediatrix for two reasons. First, because she co-operated in a unique manner in the Redemption, and secondly, because she is our powerful intercessor in Heaven. 8 Compendium Theologiae Dogmaticae Specialis, Vol. I, p. 204, Munich, 1got. 4Luke I, 38, 9 124. MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES a) By voluntarily assuming the office of Dei- para, Mary made possible the Incarnation and consequently our Redemption. The importance of this fact is pointed out by St. Jerome: “After the Virgin conceived in her womb and gave birth to her Son, the curse was wiped out; death [came upon the human race] through Eve, life through Mary.”® St. Ambrose teaches that the sanctifi- cation of John the Baptist in his mother’s womb was due to the mediatorship of Mary.°® The Blessed Virgin, furthermore, incalculably advanced the salvation of mankind by her virtu- ous life. As virgin, mother, and wife she fur- nishes a brilliant example of all virtues. The female sex in particular is indebted to her for its liberation from the contemptible state into which it had fallen. We can form an idea of the moral value of her life if we consider what would prob- ably be the condition of the human family and civil society in general without her. The welfare of both family and State depends on the purity of woman. Millions of men as well as women owe the victory they have gained over the demon 5 “ Postquam vero Virgo concepit processus exstitit, ut ad saluta- in utero et peperit Filium, soluta maledictio est; mors per Evam, viia per Mariam.” (Ep. ad Eustoch., 22.) 6In Luc., II, 29: “Non enim sola familiaritas est causa quod diu mansit, sed etiam tanti vatis pr ofec- tus. Nam sit primo ingressu tanius tionem Mariae exsultaret infans in utero, vepleretur Spiritu Sancio mater infantis, quantum putamus usu tanti temporis sanctae Mariae addidisse praesentiam? ”’ Other texts quoted by Schaefer, Die Got- tesmutter in der Hl. Schrift, pp. 214 sqd- HER SECONDARY MEDIATORSHIP. (1254 of impurity to the example of her who is the ideal virgin and mother. | Lastly, the Blessed Virgin may be said after a fashion to have co-operated in the atonement, because she formed the Divine Victim in her chaste womb, prepared Him for the slaughter, and, standing beneath the Cross, offered Him up for the salvation of mankind. This fact justifies the attribution to her of the honorary title of diacona sacrifict (ndopos), The spiritual mar- tyrdom which she suffered at the foot of the Cross earned for her the twofold title of “Queen of Mattyrs ° and “Help of Christians.’ Uhis thought deserves to be developed a little more fully. We need but consider Mary’s ardent love for her Divine Son, the excruciating tortures He suffered, and the terrible blasphemies to which she was compelled to listen, to appreciate the _ agony that pierced her soul during our Lord’s ‘dolorous passion and death. Simeon’s prophecy: “A sword shall pierce thy soul’ * was so literally fulfilled under the Cross that St. Bernardine of Siena was able to say without exaggeration: “The pain suffered by the Blessed Virgin was so intense that if it were divided among her fellow- _ creatures, they would all die on the spot. The _ Blessed Virgin Mary, standing beneath the 7 Luke _ IJI,-.35. 126 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES Cross, suffered all this for us, and thus became our mother and was declared to be such by her crucified Son Himself.” ® It is the teaching of many Scholastics since St. Anselm that our dying Saviour, when He uttered the memorable words: ‘Woman, behold thy son.... Behold thy mother,” ® committed His Blessed Mother to the entire human race in the person of St. John, and appointed her the spiritual mother of all His brethren. Bishop Schaefer interprets this touch- ing scene as follows: “Mary... stands at the foot of the Cross not merely as the mother of her dying Son, but as the mother of Him who is the Redeemer of mankind. Hence the Son, speaking in His capacity as Messias, addresses her as ‘Woman.’ The time when, according to the prediction of the Protevangelium, the ‘seed’ of the woman (taking the term in the sense of an indi- vidual person) was to crush the head of the ‘serpent,’ is at hand. But we also observe how at the very same moment the ‘serpent’ crushes the heel of this ‘seed,’ in that Christ dies through the very instrumentality of that sacred manhood by which we are redeemed. Beneath the Cross stands, among others, the mother of this one 8“ Tantus fuit dolor Virginis, ut Filio declarata.” (Serm., si in omnes creaturas divideretur, omnes subito perirent: haec omnia eon see Schaefer, op. cit., pp. 170 61;) art.) 3, C 2.) On the prophecy of Sim- B. Virgo Maria stans sub cruce pro nobis passa est, ita ut et mater no- stra sit facta et ut talis a crucifixo sqq. (English ed. pp. 180 sqq.). 9John XIX, 26 sq. HER SECONDARY MEDIATORSHIP, 127 ‘seed,’ who is Christ—she, the woman whom the Proto-Gospel had already pointed out to hu- manity both as the mother of Jesus and the new Eve or mother of all those to be endowed with supernatural life... . And henceforth Mary receives her spiritual ‘seed.’ Christ’s words: ‘Behold thy son,’ must be interpreted in accord- ance with this idea. Coming from the Mes- sias, it is a message of salvation for all the faith- ful who gather under the Cross. Of all the Apostles called by Jesus, ... only one, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved,’ followed Him to the Cross, thus representing those that were to be saved and for whom, as a price, the Precious Blood was shed.” *° We can show by still another argument that Mary’s sublime office of Deipara destined her to be the spiritual mother and consequently the mediatrix of all Christians. | a) As the antithesis of Eve, Mary is the “mother of all the living” in a manner similar to that in which her Divine Son, the ‘‘second Adam,” who crushed the serpent’s head, is the spiritual leader of all those whom He has redeemed by His passion and death. Eve was the mother of perdition for all men (anua mortis) ; Mary must consequently, e contrario, be the mother of salva- 10 Op. cit., pp. 238 sq. (English Comment. de B. Virgine Maria, edition, p. 251). Cfr. Bucceroni, pp. 178 sqq. 128 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES tion for all (ianwa vitae). Or, in the words of St. Irenzus, “As Eve . . . was through her disobe- dience the cause of death to herself and the entire human race,so Mary . . . through her obedience was the source of salvation to herself and the whole human race.” ** The same writer says elsewhere: “If the former [Eve] was disobe- dient to God, the latter [Mary] was persuaded to obey Him, in order that the Virgin Mary might be the advocate of the virgin Eve.” 12. Bardenhewer comments on this passage as follows: “Where the Latin translation has advocata, the Greek text most probably had wapé«Ayros, The term means causa salutis and has become memorable by being incorporated into the liturgy of the Church (advo- cata nostra).” ** B) St. Paul teaches that we become spiritual brethren of Christ by Baptism.'* If this is true, then those who are baptized are e€0 ipso also spirit- ual children of Mary. vy) The Redemption was conditioned upon the consent of the Blessed Virgin to become the mother of God. The physical birth of our Sa- viour meant the moral regeneration of all man- _ kind. Consequently Mary became our spiritual 11 Adv. Haer., III, 22, 4. 14 Rom. VIII, 29; Heb. II, 11, 12 Adv. Haer., V, 19, 1. a7; ctr. Matth, XXVIII, 3:6; John 13 Geschichte der altkirchlichen XX, 17. Literatur, Vol. I, p. 521, Freiburg 1902. HER SECONDARY MEDIATORSHIP 129 mother when she consented to become the mother ~ of God. | i 5) The ideal woman must be conceived as shar- ing in the Saviour’s affection for all men. Mary is the spiritual mother of mankind also through the love she bears for all.”° b) Our Lady is furthermore the mediator of mankind in Heaven, where she effectively inter- cedes for the Church as a whole and for ea¢h in- dividual Christian in particular. «) This belief dates back to primitive times and is exemplified by many pictures found in the Roman catacombs.® The ‘“Memorare,’ often erroneously ascribed to St. Bernard, is a medieval pendant of the famous «avev mapaxdyrixos of the Greek Church.” To form a correct idea of the nature of Mary’s celestial intercession we must remember that it differs essentially, and not only in degree, from the heavenly inter pellatio Christi.18 Our Lord intercedes for us as the royal High Priest, Mary asa loving mother. Their in- tercession differs both as to nature and power in precisely the same way in which the Godman (cévOpwmos) differs from the Deipara (%07¢x0s), 8) The intercession of the Blessed Virgin is naturally far more powerful than that of the other 15 These considerations are de- 16Cfr. Thos. J. Shahan, The veloped by St. Bernard. Cfr. B. Haeusler, De Mariae Plenitudine Gratiae secundum S§., Bernardum, Frib. Helv. rogo1. 4 Blessed Virgin im the Catacombs, Baltimore 1892. i7 Cfr. Ballerini, Sylloge, I, 481. 18 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Soteriology, pp. 134 saa. 130 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES saints, for while they are friends of God, she is His Mother. “She is the mediator between us and Christ,” says St. Bonaventure, “even as Christ is the mediator between us and God.” iB or this reason, too, her mediation is universal, whereas that of the Angels and Saints is limited in scope. From this point of view there is justifi- cation in the probable, though not strictly theolog- ical opinion of St. Alphonsus de’ Liguori, so hotly contested by Muratori, that our Divine Saviour bestows His graces on mankind through His Blessed Mother, who may therefore be truly called “dispensatrix omnium gratiarum.”’ It is in this same sense that St. Bernard refers to her as the “uberrimus gratiarum aquaeductus,”’ and Suarez says: ‘Therefore the Church prays more frequently and, as it were, in a higher man- ner to the Blessed Virgin Mary than to the other saints.” °° St. Bernardine of Siena teaches that “every grace which is communicated to this world has a threefold origin: it flows from God to Christ, from Christ to the Virgin, and from the Virgin to us.”?* In the light of this probable teaching, (which cannot, however, be positively 19 “ Ista est beata virgo, quae me- diatrix est inter nos et Christum, sicut Christus inter nos et Deum.’ (Comment. in Quatuor Libros Sent., TIP Sis.) 3) pn, arte mengim ye.) 20De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 23, sect. 2, n. 5: ‘“* Bt ideo ecclesia et frequentius et altiori quodam modo orat ad Virginem quam ad reliquos sanctos.”’ 21“ Omnis gratia, quae huic sae- culo communicatur, triplicem habet processum: nam a Deo in Christum, a Christo in Virginem, a Virgine in nos ordinatissime dispensatur.” (Quoted by Leo XIII in his En- cyclical Letter of Sept. 8th, 1894.) HER) SECONDARY MEDIATORSHIP |) 131 proved from the Fathers),”” we must judge the titles applied to the Blessed Virgin in the Litany of Loreto and also certain rather extravagant eulogies that occur in the writings of the Fathers. It must always be borne in mind (1) that the dis- pensation of graces through the agency of our Lady is not a necessary condition of salvation but a free divine ordinance, and (2) that the manner by which she obtains graces for us is simply and solely her maternal intercession, based upon the merits of Jesus Christ. A Catholic may confidently ask Mary for her powerful intercession without ever entertain- ing the foolish apprehension that there is danger | of offending Christ by addressing Him through His Blessed Mother. The dogmatic teaching of the Church is too clear to allow any intelligent Catholic to believe that the Blessed Virgin is able to accomplish anything without her Son. In its last analysis, therefore, every prayer ad- dressed to Our Lady is addressed to Christ, 2. e., God. y) In this as in so many other things the Church herself carefully guides the faithful both by word and example. She directs her liturgical prayers sometimes to the tri-une God, sometimes to Jesus Christ, and then again to the Blessed Virgin Mary, but invariably emphasizes her belief in Christ as the sole Mediator by conclud- 22 Cfr. Petavius, De Incarnatione, XIV, 9, 8. 132. MARY’S SPECIAL: PREROGATIVES ing with the words: “through Christ our Lord.” *° Despite the forbearance with which she tolerates certain excesses and extravagances,”* the Church will never allow an exaggerated cult of the Vir- gin to obscure the dignity and majesty of Christ. This is plainly apparent from the condemnation of a certain novel representation of the Madonna and Child called “Domina Christi,’ and the re- jection of the new-fangled title “Queen of the Heart of Jesus.” *° READINGS: — P. Ventura, La Madre di Dio Madre degli Uomini, 2d ed., Rome 1885.— *A. Nicolas, La Viérge Marie et le Plan Divin, Nouvelles Etudes Philosophiques sur le Chvristia- nisme, 4 vols., Paris 1852-61.—Lapale, Marie Immaculée et la Femme Chrétienne daprés le Plan Divin, Paris 1881.— J. Korber, Maria im System der Heilsdkonomie, Ratisbon 1883.—L. W. Wornhart, Maria die wunderbare Mutter Gottes und der Men- schen, Innsbruck 1896.— Terrien, S. J.. La Mére de Dieu et la Mére des Hommes d’aprés les Péres et la Théologie, 4 vols., Paris 1900 sqq.—*Al. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutier in der Hl. Schrifi, 2nd ed., pp. 145 saqq., 209 sqq., Miinster 1900 (English ed., New York 1913, pp. 153 sdq., 220 sqq.). 23 Per Christum Dominum no- Blessed Virgin cfr. Thos. Esser, stvum, 24 On “ Catholic Excesses in De- votion to the Blessed Virgin’ see the admirable chapter in Cardinal Newman’s Letter addressed to Dr. Pusey on the occasion of his Eiren- icon, A. D. 1864 (Certain Difficul- ties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, Vol. II, pp. 89-118, London 1907). 25 Decree of the S. Congr. of the Holy Office, Feb. 28, 1875. The text of this decree may be read in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record for April, 1875. Cfr. Newman, op. cit., II, 169 sq.— On the Rosary of the ‘with an O. P., U. L. Frauen Rosenkranz, Paderborn 1889; De Buscher, Le Rosaire de Marie, Bruges 1901; H. Thurston, S. J., in the Catholic En- cyclopedia, Vol. XIII, pp. 184-187, extensive bibliography. Certain devotional abuses that have arisen in the South of Europe are severely censured by Bishop Bono- melli of Cremona in his work, I] Culto Religioso, Difetti e Abusi, Cremona 1905, recently translated into English under the title, On Re- ligious Worship and Some Defects in Popular Devotions. SECTION 2 THE CULT OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 1. DEFINITION OF TERMS.—Worship or devo- tion (cultus) to some person, idea or thing 1 may be religious or profane, absolute or relative. It always comprises three separate and distinct acts: a) An act of intellectual assent to the vener- ability of the person, idea or object which is the object of worship; b) An act of the will by which the theoretical judgment becomes practical; c) An external act giving expression to the in- ternal sentiment. The formal object of every act of religious worship is the supernatural dignity, excellence or perfection of the person, idea or thing worship- ped. Hence we may distinguish different kinds of worship according to the various species or de- grees of perfection inherent in the persons, ideas or things themselves. 1Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, between the formal and the material p. 278. object of religious worship in.gen- 2 On the distinction between abso- eral, see Pohle-Preuss, Christology, lute and relative worship, and that pp. 279 sa. 133 rea, MARY SORE LAR PREROGA TIVES The absolute worship we owe to the increate majesty of God and to the Godman Jesus Christ, and which is called latreutic or divine worship (adoration), differs essentially from that due to any creature. When directed to a creature, latreutic adoration (cultus latriae) is called idol- atry (idololatria). The worship which we owe to specially en- dowed creatures, such as the angels and saints, is technically termed dulia. The highest form of dulia is due to the Blessed Virgin Mary, because she transcends all other creatures by her unique dignity as Mother of God. Theologians are wont to call this special worship hyperdula. Some even hold that there is a specific difference between it and the ordinary worship paid to the saints. In making this distinction they do not, of course, lose sight of the essential difference be- tween the hyperdulic devotion rendered to our Lady and the latreutic adoration due to God alone.® 2. THE BLESSED VirGIN Mary 1s ENTITLED TO A SPECIAL KinD OF WORSHIP SUPERIOR TO THAT PAID TO THE OTHER SAINTS.—In demon- strating this proposition we must distinguish be- tween the quaestio iuris and the quaestio factt. 3 Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., «ima enim reverentia debetur homint 2a) 2ae; au. (103; are) "4, ad 2: ex affinitate, quam habet ad Deum.” “Hyperdulia est potissima species (Cfr. De Lugo, De Myst. Incarn., duliae communiter sumptae: ma-_ disp. 35, sect. 2.) THE CULT OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 135 a) First as to the quaestio iuris. The higher the dignity and holiness of a person, the greater is his or her claim to our respect and veneration. Now, the dignity of the Blessed Virgin, morally considered, is immeasurably high * and her sanc- tity commensurate with the fulness of grace with which God has endowed her. Consequently, she is entitled to a worship which, while essentially be- low that due to God, exceeds the ordinary dulia exhibited to the Saints in precisely the same meas- ure in which, as Scordxos, Mary outranks the angels and saints. This is precisely what is called hyper- dula. From the fact that Mary deserves such a high degree of veneration, it may be inferred that devotion to her is a religious duty. It is difficult to conceive how a Catholic could really love Jesus without honoring His mother.* By a kind of psychological necessity habitual neglect of Mary leads to contempt of her Divine Son. This truth is clearly exemplified in the history of Protestantism. The Church had good reasons for linking the “ Hail Mary ” with the “ Our Father,” for enriching the ecclesi- astical calendar with numerous beautiful festivals in honor of Our Lady, and for exhorting the faithful to pray to her often and fervently by megs the Rosary and other special devotions.’ b) The quaestio facti offers no greater difficul- ties than the quaestio iuris. Christians have at 4V. supra, pp. 16 sqq. 7 Cfr. Benedict XIV, De Festis 5V. supra, pp. 24 saqq. D. N. Iesu Christi et B. Mariae 6Cfr. Newman, Difficulties of Virginis, Venice 1767. Anglicans, Vol. II, pp. 82 sda. 136 MARY’S SPECIAL PREROGATIVES all times since the institution of the Church rendered to Mary that peculiar kind of worship which is now technically known as hyperdulia. During the first three centuries, it is true, Mary did hot occupy such a prominent place in the thoughts and prayers of the faithful. Her glory was overshadowed by that of her Divine Son. We need not wonder at this ; for the Godman Himself had first to be generally acknowl- edged and adored before Mary could come into the wor- ship due to her as His mother.® Towards the end of the sixth century a sect of Arabian women went so far astray as to adore Mary and to offer her cakes, which were consumed at feasts similar to the thesmophoria held in honor of the pagan goddess Demeter.? This aberration was condemned by St. Epi- phanius, who declared that Mary, though “a select ves- sel” exalted above all the Saints, is not entitled to divine honors, » Soon after Constantine the Great had led forth the infant Church from the catacombs, devotion to our Lady began to spread. The cities of Nicaea (where the first general council was held) and Byzantium (Constantinople), the new capital of the empire, were officially dedicated to the Blessed Virgin by the Emperor Constantine. His mother St. Helena erected the first churches in 8“ Sicut gloriam in Filio prae- cessit humilitas, sic matris humili- tatem, quae redundabat a Filio, est subsecuta sublimitas,’” says Abbot Guibert (De Laude S§. Mariae, CG.) 420% ® On this sect, called Collyridians (from Ko\XUpta, small cakes) cfr. Hergenrother, Kirchengeschichte, Vol. I, 4th ed., p. 304, Freiburg 1902; Wernsdorf, Dissert. de Colly- ridianorum Secta, Vitemb. 1745. THE CULT OF THE BLESSED) VIRGIN | 137 honor of Our Lady at Bethlehem and Nazareth. | In Rome, Pope Liberius (352-366) built the famous basilica known as Santa Maria Mag-. giore. The Third Ecumenical Council of Ephe- sus (A. D. 431) held its sessions in a temple ded- icated to the Geordéxos, Recent discoveries in the catacombs show that devotion to the Blessed Virgin is as old as the Church. Her image ap- pears at the beginning of the second century in the catacombs of St. Priscilla, where she is rep- resented in a sitting posture with the Divine In- fant in her arms, facing the prophet Isaias who carries a manuscript roll in his left hand and points to a star with his right.*° READINGS : — St. Thomas, S. Theol., 3a, qu. 25, art. 5.— *Suarez, De Incarnatione, disp. 22, sect. 3— Petavius, De Incarnatione, XIV, 8 sqq.— B. Plazza, Christianorum in Sanctos Sanctorumque Reginam Propensa Devotio, Palermo 1547.— Abelly, Sentiments des SS. Péres touchant les Excellences et les Prérogatives de la Trés-Sainte Viéerge, Paris 1674—*Trombelli, Mariae Sanc- tissimae Vita.ac Gesta Cultusque illi Adlibitus, 6 vols., Bologna 1761.—*Haine, De Hyperdulia, Louvain 1864.—F. A. von Leh- ner, Die Marienverehrung in den ersten Jahrhunderien, and ed., Stuttgart 1886.— *H. F. J. Liell, Die Darstellungen der allerselig- sten Jungfrau und Gottesgebarerin Maria auf den Kunstdenk- milern in den Katakomben, Freiburg 1887— Jos. Wilpert, Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms, 2 vols., Freiburg 1903.— S. Beissel, S. J., Die Verehrung unserer lieben Frau in Deutschland wahrend des Mittelalters, Freiburg 1896.—IpeM, Geschichte der Verehrung ‘Mariens in Deutschland bis zum Ende des Mittelal- 10 Cfr. C. M. Kaufmann, Hand- of St. Callistus, pp. 67 sq., Rome buch der chyristlichen Archiologie, 1911; Shahan, The Blessed Virgin pp. 361 sq... Raderborn, 19053 in the Catacombs, Baltimore 1892. Scaglia-Nagengast, The Catacombs 139) MARYS SPECIAL PREROGATIVES ters, Freiburg 1909.— Ipem, Geschichte der Verehrung Marias im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Freiburg 1910—*B. Bartman, Christus ein Gegner des Marienkultus? Freiburg 1909.— Hergenrother- Phelan, A History of the Devotion to the Blessed Virgin in the First Ten Centuries. St. Louis 1880.—J. H. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 12th ed., pp. 135 saqq., 410 sqq., London 1903.—IpEem, “ A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on Occasion of His Eirenicon of 1864,” in Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans Considered, Vol. II, pp. I-170, new ed., London 1907— H. G. Ganss, Mariolatry: New Phases of an Old Fallacy, Notre Dame, Ind., 1897—Chs. F. McGinnis, The Communion of Saints, pp. 1 sqq., 154 saqq., St. Louis 1912—H. J. Coleridge, S. J., “ English Devotion to Our Blessed Lady in the Olden Time,” in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. IV, No. 15 (July 1879). — Th. E. Bridgett, C. SS. R., Our Lady’s Dowry, London 1875.—B. Rohner, O. S. B., Veneration of the Blessed Virgin. Her Feasts, Prayers, Re- ligious Orders, and Sodalities. Adapted by Rev. Richard Bren- nan, New York 1808, new impression, ibid., 1913S. Beissel, S. J., Wallfahrten zu Unserer Lieben Frau in Legende und Geschichte, Freiburg 1913.—On representations of Our Lady in the Cata- combs, see A. S. Barnes, The Early Church in the Light of the Monuments, pp. 176-178, London 1913.— A. Lopez Pelaez, El Culto de Maria, Barcelona 1918.— B. J. Otten, S. J., 4 Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. Il, St. Louis 1918, pp. 415 sqq. Ultima in mortis hora Filium pro nobis ora, Bonam mortem impetra, Virgo, Mater, Domina, APPENDIX ON THE WORSHIP OF THE SAINTS, RELICS, AND IMAGES The worship due to the Blessed Virgin Mary (hyperdulia), to be rightly understood, must be considered in connection with the worship which we owe to the other Saints of God (dulia). This justifies the addition to Mariology of an appendix treating of the Worship of the Saints and the kindred subject of the Veneration of Relics and Images. 139 id : CELA PALE Rn. THE WORSHIP OF THE SAINTS The first and most important point to be noted in regard to the Catholic dogma of the wor- ship of the Saints is that both dulia, 1. e., the wor- ship we render to the Saints in general, and hyper- dulia, 1. e., that specific worship which we give to the Blessed Virgin in particular, differ formally and essentially from the divine worship due to Almighty God (atria). The difference between dulia (including hyper- dulia) and latria is as vast as the gulf that sepa- rates the creature from its Creator. ‘The rela- tion between dulia and latria, like that between creature and Creator, is purely analogical.’ Their formal objects are separate and distinct. The formal object of Jatria is the virtus religionis ; that of dulia, the virtus observantiae.? This dis- tinction is sufficient to disprove the odious charge, sometimes made against Catholics, that they adore the Virgin Mary and the Saints. Of its very 1Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God: His 2 Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., Knowability, Essence, and Attri- 2a 2ae, qu. I02 sq. butes, pp. 165 sqq. 140 oar ee THE WORSHIP OF THE SAINTS 141 nature the worship we give to the Saints has nothing in common with idolatry.’ Dulia takes the form either of veneration or invocation. Veneration (veneratio) is respect and reverence shown to the Saints for their own sake. Invocation (invocatio) is calling upon them for help in order to advance our own welfare. It is to be noted, however, that invocation logically in- cludes, or at least presupposes, a certain respect and reverence for the person to whom it is directed, and consequently implies veneration. Honor and veneration are by no means synonymous terms and should not be employed interchangeably. God honors His Saints, but He does not venerate them. Veneration logically connotes an acknowledgment of the superior excellence of, and humble submission to, the person to whom it is exhibited. Hence the term dulia, from Sovdcla, i. €., service. The cultus duliae which we exhibit to the per- son of a Saint is absolute, in contradistinction to the merely relative worship which we give to holy relics and images. Another essential difference is that relics and images, being inanimate objects, may be venerated but not invoked.. “Honor or reverence,’ says St. Thomas of Aquin, “is due solely to rational creatures; those devoid of reason can be honored or reverenced only with respect - to some rational nature.” 4 ‘3 Cir. H. G. Ganss, Mariolatry: 4 Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 25, art. New Phases of an Old Fallacy, 4: “Honor seu reverentia non de- Notre Dame, Ind., 1897, . betur nisi rationali creaturae: crea- 142 APPENDIX It is licit and useful to venerate and invoke the Saints and to honor their relics. This is one of the most ancient dogmas of the Christian Church. To ridicule and condemn the veneration of the Saints and their relics, therefore, would be tantamount to accusing the Primitive Church of idolatry. The Catholic teaching with regard to the wor- ship of the Saints is succinctly set forth in the subjoined thesis. Thesis: The Saints in Heaven are entitled to the cultus duliae, and we may, with profit to ourselves, beg them to intercede for us with God. This thesis embodies two distinct articles of faith. Proor OF THE First Part. The Council of Trent defines: ‘““The honor which is given them [the images] is referred to the originals which they represent; in such wise that, by the images which we kiss, and before which we un- cover our heads, or kneel, we adore Christ and venerate His Saints, whose likeness they bear.” ° If it is permitted to venerate the images of the Saints, then, a fortiori, it must be permitted to venerate the Saints themselves. turae autem insensibili non debetur honor vel reverentia nisi ratione rvationalis creaturae.” 5“ Honos, qui eis exhibetur, refertur ad prototypa, quae illae [scil. imagines] repraesentant, tta ut per imagines, quas osculamur et coram quibus caput aperimus et procumbimus, Christum adoremus et Sanctos, quorum illae similitu- dinem gerunt, veneremur.” (Sess. XXV, De Invocatione et Venera- tione et Reliquiis Sanctorum, ete. Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 986.) THE WORSHIP: OF THE SAINTS 143 a) It is true that Sacred Scripture, while it praises and approves the cultus of the angels,” says nothing about the veneration of the Saints. But what it says of the angels may safely be ap- plied to the Saints in Heaven. The Bible even tells us of religious veneration rendered to saintly persons on earth.’ In warning the Colossians against the “religion of angels,” ® St. Paul had in mind the worship of zons as practiced by certain Jews and Gnostics.° A real difficulty against our thesis seems to arise from Apoc. XIX, 10, where the angel appearing to St. John declines the adoration offered to him. “ And I fell down before his feet to adore him. And he saith tome: See thou do it not: I am thy fellow servant,’® and of thy brethren, who have the testimony of Jesus. Adore God.” Rightly interpreted, however, this passage confirms rather than disproves the licitness of the veneration given to the angels. For when St. John “ fell down before his feet to adore ” the angel, he either believed that Christ Him- self stood before him, and in that case it was the angel’s duty to disabuse him of his error and to refuse the adora- tion offered; or he was aware that the apparition was an angel, and then he believed it to be licit and proper to “ fall down before his feet and adore him,” in which case adorare is evidently used in the sense of venerari. But why did the Angel decline the worship offered 6Cfr. Ex. XXIII, 20 sqq.; Jos. TBR 370 V, 13 sqq.; Dan. VIII, 15 sqq.; X, 8 Col. II, 18. i Beets LOD. Akos Cir.’ Matth. 9 Cfr. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., III, XVIII, 10, etc. 28. 7E. g., to Elias (3 Kings XVIII, 10 Conservus, givdovdos. - 37 sqq.) and Eliseus (4 Kings II, 144 APPENDIX to him? He gives the reason himself. Because St. John, being an Apostle of Christ, was his “ fellow ser- vant,” the equal, as a divine messenger, of the angels, and under no obligation to humiliate himself before them (dulia = servitus). Paul and Barnabas restrained the people of Lystra from honoring them, because the worship offered was idolatrous. Acts XIV, 10 sqq.: “And when the mul- titudes had seen what Paul had done, they lifted up their voice in the Lycaonian tongue, saying: The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men; and they called Barnabas Jupiter: but Paul, Mercury, because he was chief speaker. The priest also of Jupiter that was be- fore the city, bringing oxen and garlands before the gate, would have offered sacrifice with the people.” b) Devotion to the angels, especially the guar- dian angels, seems to be older than worship of the Saints. But this is due entirely to historic conditions. The infant Church had first to beget Saints before she could honor them. It is easy to see, too, why the martyrs were the first Saints tobe venerated. The early Christians regarded martyrdom as the climax of Christian virtue. To lay down one’s life for the faith was to obtain forgiveness of all sins, immediate en- trance to Heaven, and the privilege of being for- ever identified with the fortunes of the Church on earth. The graves of the martyrs in course of time became altars, and before long the venera- tion of other Saints who were not martyrs, espe- THE WORSHIP OF THE SAINTS 145 cially the Blessed Virgin Mary, grew more popu- | Jari? Tertullian testifies that in his day the memory of the martyrs was celebrated every year.*? St. Cyprian says: “We celebrate the sufferings of the martyrs and their days by annual commemorations.’ ** St. Augustine vigorously defends the ancient Christian practice of venerating the martyrs. “The Christian populace,” he says in his treatise against Faustus the Manichean, “celebrates the memory of the martyrs with religious solemnity, . . . but we rear altars not to any martyr, but _ to the God of martyrs Himself, though in memory of the martyrs. For what priest, standing before the altar where their sacred bodies lie, has ever said: We offer [sacrifice] to thee, © Peter, or Paul, or Cyprian? What is offered, is offered to God, who has crowned the martyrs, near the memorial places of those whom He has crowned, that a stronger affection may arise from the places themselves to intensify our love both for those whom we can imitate and for Him by whose help we are _able to imitate them. We venerate the martyrs, there- fore, with that worship of love and association by which the Saints of God are venerated in this life, . .. all the more devoutly, because they have securely won their bat- tles. . . . But we worship God alone by that cult which in Greek is called Aarpefa, a term for which there is no equivalent in Latin, as it means a certain servitude which in its proper sense is due only to the Divinity.” ™* 12 Cfr.. J.P. Kirsch; The. Doc- 12 De Corona, c. 3: “ Oblationes trine of the Communion of Saints in the Ancient Church, pp. 18 sqa., 736 Cir, Ex, XID; 19:' “And. Moses: took Joseph’s bones with him: because he had adjured the children of Israel, saying: God shall visit you, carry out my bones from hence with you.”* 4 Kings XIII, 21: “Some that were burying a man, saw the rovers, and cast the body into the sepulchre of Eliseus. And when it had touched the bones of Eliseus, the man came to life and stood upon his feet.” 2Sess. XXV_ (Denzinger-Bann- torum reliquiis venerationem atque wart, n. 985): “ Sanctorum quoque honorem non deberi vel eas aliaque martyrum et aliorum cum Christo sacra monumenta a fidelibus inuti- viventium sancta corpora, quae viva liter honorari.... omnino damnan- membra fuerunt Christi et templum dos esse, prout iampridem eos Spiritus Sancti ab ipso ad aeternam damnavit et nunc etiam damnat Ec- vitam suscitanda et glorificanda, a clesia.” fidelibus veneranda esse, per quae 3 Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 440. 4 - mulia beneficia a Deo hominibus 4 Cfr, Ecclus. XLIX, 18. hel rata AY ita ut afirmantes Sanc- 156 APPENDIX The New Testament in numerous passages illustrates the miraculous effects of relics. We will quote buta few: “And behold a woman who was troubled with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him [ Jesus], and touched the hem of his garment. For she said within herself: Ii I shall touch only his garment, I shall be healed. But Jesus turning and seeing her, said: Be of good cheer, daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.’ ® The first Christians had such great confidence in St. Peter that they “brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that when Peter came, his shadow at the least might overshadow any of them, and they might be delivered from their infirmities.’* By the hand of St. Paul “God wrought . . . more than common miracles, so that even there were brought from his body to the sick, handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the wicked spirits went out of them.” * Why, then, did our Lord blame the Pharisees for honoring and adorning the graves of the prophets? Matth. XXIII, 29: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that build the sepulchres of the prophets, and adorn the monu- ments of the just... .” The context shows that 5 Matth. IX, 20 saq. 6 Acts V, 15. 7 Acts XIX, 11. sq. THE WORSHIP OF RELICS _—s7 He did not censure the act itself, but merely the. hypocritical motives by which it was inspired. For the Pharisees, like their fathers, persecuted God’s prophets and crucified the greatest one among them. “By building sepulchres to the prophets,” says St. Ambrose, “they condemned the deeds of their fathers; but the condemnation fell back upon themselves, because they imitated the crimes of their fathers. . . . Hence it was not the building of sepulchres but the imitation of their fathers that was reckoned a crime.” § b) The worship of holy relics is an ancient practice in the Church. Thus we read in the Acts of St. Polycarp (composed about A.D. 156): “We adore Him [Christ], because He is the Son of God, but the martyrs we love as disciples and imitators of the Lord. ... Then we buried in a becoming place his [St. Polycarp’s] remains, which are more precious to us than the costliest diamonds, and which we esteem more highly than gold. The Lord will grant us to assemble there as often as possible in glad- ness and joy, and to commemorate the birthday of his [Polycarp’s] martyrdom, for the twofold purpose of re- minding us of those who have already gained the palm of victory, and to exercise and train those who are yet tovventer the: conflict,”?.? 8In Luc., VII, n. 106: “ Aedifi- 9 Mariyrium S. Polycarpi, c. 17, cando sepulchra prophetarum patrum ed. Funk, Vol. I, 301. For many suorum facta damnabant, aemulando other similar instances see Th. autem paterna scelera in setpsos Ruinart, Acta Primorum Martyrum sententiam retorquebant.... Non Sincera et Selecta, 2d ed., Amster- igitur aedificatio, sed aemulatio loco dam 1713. criminis aestimatur.” 158 APPENDIX The Fathers regard the numerous miracles wrought through the bodies of holy martyrs as so many arguments in support of the dogma under consideration. St. Ambrose relates how a blind man was restored to sight when the newly found bodies of SS. Gervasius and Protasius were taken to the basilica, and adds: “ You know, nay you havé seen with your own eyes, how many were delivered from demons, and a great num- ber were cured of diseases when they touched the gar- ments of the Saints; how there was a repetition of the miracles of the early days when, in consequence of the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, abundant grace was showered down upon the earth.”?° St. Augustine also tells of a number of miracles wrought in connection with holy relics.** 10 Ep., 22, n. 9 (Migne, P..L., XVI, 1022 sq.): ‘“‘ Cognovistis, imo vidistis ipsi multos a daemontis pur- gatos, plurimos etiam, ubi vestem sanctorum manibus contigerunt, ws quibus laborabant debilitatibus abso- lutos, reparata vetusti temporis miracula, quo se per adventum Domini Iesu gratia terris maior in- fuderat.” 11 Confessiones, IX, 7; De Civ. Dei, XXII, 8. St. Ambrose severely rebukes the Arians, who denied that miracles were wrought through rel- ics. “Et Ariani dicunt: Non sunt istti martyres nec torquere diabolum - possunt nec aliquem liberare.... Negant caecum illuminatum, sed tlle non negat se sanatum. Ille dicit: Video, qui non videbam. Ille dicit: Caecus esse desivi, et probat facto. Isti beneficium negant, qui factum negare non possunt. Notus homo publicis, quum valeret, mancipatus obsequiis, Severus nomine, lanius ministerio.” (Ep., 22, n. 16 sq.) St. Jerome says in his treatise Con- tra Vigilantium (n. 5): “ Dolet martyrum reliquias pretioso operirt velamine et non vel pannis vel cili- cio colligari vel protict in sterqui- linum, ut solus Vigilantius ebrius et dormiens adoretur. Ergo sacrilegt sumus, quando Apostolorum basili- cas ingredimur? Sacrilegus fuit Constantius Imperator I., qui sanc- tas reliquias Andreae, Lucae et Ti- mothei transtulit Constantinopolim, apud quas daemones rugiunt?” Other Patristic texts in Petavius, *De Incarn., XIV, 13 and Thomas- sin, De Incarn., XII, 4.— The Pa- tristic evidence is so overwhelming that even Harnack is constrained to confess: ‘*‘ Most offensive was the worship of relics. It flourished to its greatest extent as early as the fourth century and no Church doc- tor of repute restricted it. All of them rather, even the Cappadocians, countenanced it. The numerous miracles which were wrought by bones and relics seemed to confirm their worship. The Church, there- fore, would not give up the prac- tice, although a violent attack was THE WORSHIP OF RELICS 159 c) This traditional practice explains the spe- cial veneration which Catholics have always entertained for what were believed to be particles of the true Cross. a) St. Cyril of Jerusalem says: “This holy wood of the Cross is still to be seen among us; and through the agency of those who piously took home particles thereof, it has filled the whole earth.”1* St. Chrysostom tells how men and women used to wear particles of the Cross in golden lockets on their necks.** The faithful were also wont to venerate the lance, the nails, the pillar at which our Lord was scourged, the linen in which His sacred body was wrapped, His tunic, the crib in which He was supposed to have lain as an infant, the holy sepulchre, etc. Some of these relics have not stood the test of archeological criticism, but this proves nothing against the thesis we are sustaining.” No doubt, after the critics have done their work, the Church will not hesitate, with due regard to the senti- ments of the faithful, to withdraw all spurious relics from public veneration and thus place the trustful devotion of her children upon a secure historical basis.*® 8) There is another early Christian practice which, to be properly understood, must be judged in the light of made upon it by a few cultured heathens and besides by the Man- icheans.” (Hist. of Dogm., Engl. Pha LV Ole, L Vy. De 303-) 12° Catech., x0, n._ ro.) St. Cyril and. a few other Patristic and me- dieval writers apparently believed that there was some virtue inherent in relics. On this point see H. Thurston in the Catholic Encyclo- pedia, Vol. XII, p. 735. - 14 Migne, P. G., XLVIII, 826. 15 Cfr. St. John Damascene, De Fide Orth., TV, 11. i6 Cfr. Rohault de Fleury, Mé- moire sur les Instruments de la Pas- sion, Paris 1870; L. de Combes, The Finding of the Cross, pp. 167 sqq., London 1907. Regarding certain al- leged relics of the Precious Blood of our Divine Saviour see Pohle- Preuss, Christology, pp. 170 sqq. 160 APPENDIX the veneration exhibited to holy relics. It is the custom of making pilgrimages to the tombs of the Saints, especially Apostles and martyrs. Bishop Jonas of Or- leans, who died about 840, writes: “We are taught that those are not to be censured nor to be called foolish, who, for the purpose of increasing their devotion, or seeking the intercession of the Apostles, visit their burial places, because we believe that not only is love for the service of God increased by this practice, but men will be rewarded for the labors and journeys which they undertake for the love of God. Besides, it is peculiar to the human mind to be more forcibly im- pressed by things seen than by things heard.” +7 How closely the exterior manifestations of devotion in such holy places resembled those still witnessed at the present time appears from a statement made by Theodoret of Cyrus (died about 458). He says that after being cured of various diseases, pious pilgrims were wont to leave symbolic votive offerings at the shrines where they had found relief. ‘‘ That those who pray devoutly receive the fruitage of their vows,” he says, “is proved by the pres- ents which they leave in commemoration of their cure. Some hang up gold or silver representations of eyes, oth- ers of feet, others of hands, etc.”?8 In making pilgrim- ages, however, Catholics will do well to heed the prudent -solummodo eorum mentibus adolescat amor circa divini cultus servitutem, 17 De Culiu Imag., 1. 3: ‘‘ Doce- mur, non improbandos nec more tuo [Jonas is arguing against Bishop Claudius of Turin, who opposed the veneration of images] stultos in- sipientesque appellandos esse eos, qui devotionis augmentandae gratia intercessionisque per suffragia quae- rendae Apostolorum adeunt limina, quia credimus, quod per haec non sed etiam laboris sui atque itineris, quae subire volunt intentione di- vint amoris, mercede donentur. Sane est etiam proprium humanae mentt, non adeo compungi ex audi- tis, sicut ex visis.”’ 18 De Cur. Affect. Graec., 1. 8 THE WORSHIP OF RELICS TOL admonition of Thomas 4 Kempis:1® “They who goon - many pilgrimages seldom become holy.” ”° | Reapincs:— H. Thurston, S. J., art. “Relics” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, pp. 734-738.— Benedict XIV, De Ser- vorum Dei Beatificatione et Canonisatione, IV, Pt. 2— Mioni, Il Culto delle Reliquie, Turin 1908—P. Bruder, Die Reliquien- verehrung in der kath. Kirche, Dilmen 1881.—S. Beissel, S. J., Die Verehrung der Heiligen und ihrer Reliquien in Deutschland wahrend des Mittelalters, 2 vols., Freiburg 1890-92.— H. Siebert, Zur vorreformatorischen Heiligen- und Reliquienverehrung, Frei- burg 1907,— C. Stengel, De Reliquiarum Cultu, Ingolstadt 1624.— J. Ferrandi, Disquisitio Reliquiaria, Lyons 1647 De Cordemoy, Traité des Saintes Reliques, Paris 1719.— A. S. Barnes, The Early Church in the Light of the Monuments, pp. 47-50, London 1913. 19 De Imit. Christi, I, 23. Gregory Martin, Treatyse of Chris- 20 On the subject of pilgrimages tian Peregrination, 1583; reprinted see J. Marx, Das Wallfahren i under the title, Pilgrimages and der katholischen Kirche, historisch- Relics, by the English Catholic kritisch dargestelit, Trier 1842; Truth Society, London 1915. CHAPTER. JIT THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES An image (imago, «xév) is a representation or likeness of any person, sculptured, drawn, painted or otherwise made perceptible to the sight. The person represented is known as the “prototype,” while the image itself is called “ectype.” The veneration of holy images, like that of relics, is a purely relative worship (cultus relativus), as its formal object consists in the sanctity of the person whom it represents, not in the mate- rial imageitself. The Seventh Ecumenical Coun- cil of Nicwa (ASD. 787). ‘SaysS) “The honor given to an image passes to the prototype thereof, and he who worships an image, worships in the image the person of him whom it represents.” ! Images of God and the Saints differ toto coelo from idols. An idol (simulacrum, é8wdgov) is the representa- tion of a false god, while a holy image in the Christian sense is the pictorial representation of the true God or of a genuine Saint. A Saint is venerated but not adored. Hence it is a rude and gratuitous insult to charge Cath- olics with being idolaters because they venerate the images 1“ Imaginis enim honor ad primi- vat in eo depicti subsistentiam tivum (mpwrdruroyv) transit, et qui (irréaTacty).”’ (Denzinger-Bann- adorat [i. e., colit] imaginem, ado- wart, n. 302.) 162 ee eT Pe tm} — Fp Se ead b ’ i ii yi hs ‘ ee arn el En Se PO a ee THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES 163 of Saints. “How are we idolaters,” demanded the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, “ who honor > and worship the bones, the ashes, the garments, and the tombs of the martyrs precisely for the reason that they refused to sacrifice to idols?” ® Thesis I: Holy images must not be worshipped as such. This is de fide. Proof. The Seventh Ecumenical Council (A. D. 787) says: “The more frequently they [the Saints] are beheld by means of images, the more keenly are those who view them moved to re- » member and desire their originals, to kiss them and to pay them the tribute of worship, not, how- ever, divine worship, which according to our faith is due solely to the Divine Nature.” 3 One of the Fathers of this council, Bishop Con- stantius of Constantia (a city on the island of Cyprus), said in a public confession of faith: “JT, though unworthy, assent to these truths . . accepting and embracing with honor the holy and venerable images. 2° Quomodo sumus idololatrae, qui et ipsa ossa et cinerem et pannos et sanguinem et tumulum martyrum tdeo honoramus et adoramus [i. e., colimus], quia idolis non sacrificave- runt?” (Acta Conc. Ecum. VII, 3“ Quanto frequentius per ima- ginalem formationem videntur, tanto qui has [imagines] contemplantur, alacrius eriguntur ad primitivorum Adoration, which consists in (mpwrotimwy) earum memoriam et desiderium, ad osculum et ad honora- riam his adorationem (mpookxtynaoy) tribuendam, non tamen ad veram latriam, quae secundum fidem est quaeque solam divinam naturam decet, impertiendam (ob why Thy kata tisti huov addnOivnv da- Tpelav, mpérer povyn TH Oeig gvoe).” (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 302.) 164 APPENDIX latria, i. e., the worship due to God, I render only to the supersubstantial and life-giving Trin- ity. And I exclude from the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church all those who do not hold and proclaim this doctrine, and pronounce anathema upon them.’’* This perfectly orthodox confession was later circulated among the Franks in a garbled translation, thus: “I accept and embrace with honor the holy and venerable images according to the worship of adoration which I give to the consubstantial and life-giving Trinity, and I ex- clude from the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, etc.” ° This mistranslation led a synod held at Frankfort in 794 to assume a hostile atti- tude towards the Council of Nicza.° Pope Ha- drian the First cleared up the misunderstanding, and the Second Council of Niczea was subse- quently recognized as ecumenical by the Western Church.’ 4“ Fgo indignus his consentio . suscipiens et amplectens hono- vabiliter sanctas et venerabiles ima- non sentiunt, etc.” XGCVILT rra8)) 6 Can. 2: “ Allata est in medium (Migne, P. L., gines; atque adorationem, quae per latriam, 1. e., Deo debitam servitu- tem efficitur, soli supersubstantialt et vivificae Trinitatt impendo. Et qui ita non sapiunt neque praedi- cant, a sancta catholica et apostolica Ecclesia segrego et anathemati sub- ticto.”’ (Hardouin, Conc., t. IV, p. 151.) 5“ Suscipio et amplector honora- biliter sanctas et venerandas ima- gines secundum servitium ~ adora- tionits, quod consubstantiali et vivi- ficatrici Trinitatt emitto, et qui sic quaestio de nova Graecorum synodo, quam de adorandis imaginibus Con- - stantinopoli fecerunt, in qua scrip- tum habebatur, ut qui imaginibus sanctorum ita ut deificae Triniiati servitium aut adorationem non im- penderent, anathemate iudicarentur. Qut. supra | SS. Patres — nosirt omnimodis adorationem et servi- tutem renuentes contempserunt atque consentientes condemnave- runt.’ (Mansi, Concil., t. VIII, p. 909.) 7 Cfr. Petavius, De Incarn., XV, THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES 165, a) For the Scriptural argument we must refer the reader to our treatise on God.* An explicit prohibition of image worship occurs in Ex. XX, 4sq.: “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing,’ nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: Iam the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the err et ia a It may be objected that this text forbids the making of images. It does, but only for the reason that the Jewish people were inclined to idolatry. The veneration of holy images is not a positive com- mand, but the Church is free either to introduce and encourage, or to limit and even to prohibit it where there is danger of serious abuse, as there might be, for exam- ple, in a country whose inhabitants were but just converted from idolatry.’° b) The true Tradition is attested by all those Fathers who were quoted by the iconoclasts of the eighth and sixteenth centuries against the veneration of images. For in matter of fact those Fathers did no more than oppose the ado- 12 sqq.; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, Vol. III, 2nd, ed., pp. 690 sqq., Freiburg 1877. 8 Pohle-Preuss, God: His Knowa- bility, Essence, and Attributes, 2nd ed., pp. 212 sqq. t 9 The Septuagint has e/6wdov. 10 Cfr. St. John Damascene, Or. de Imag., 1, n. 8. On canon 36 of the Council of Elvira, which presents some difficulties, see F. X. Funk, Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen und Untersuchungen, Vol. I, pp. 346 saq., Paderborn 1897. 166 APPENDIX ration of images, in doing which they were in per- fect harmony with the invariable teaching of the Church. St. John Damascene, the great champion of Catholic truth against the Greek Iconoclasts, answered his op- ponents as follows: “All the passages which you bring forward do not stamp as a crime the worship we give to images, but the practice of the heathen, who make idols of them.” 12 St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who stood in the forefront of the battle? was as em- phatic in condemning the adoration of images as he was in defending the traditional custom of venerating them. “ This,” he says, “ is the reason for the making of images: we do not transfer the adoration in spirit and truth, which is due to the incomprehensible and inaccessible Divinity, to images made by human hands; but we show the love which we rightly cherish for the true servants of the Lord, and by honoring them, honor God.” ** c) The prohibition of the Seventh Ecumencial Council also includes representations of Christ, though, of course, our Saviour, being true God, is entitled to divine worship.™ a) There seems to be a contradiction between the teaching of this Council and that of St. Thomas, who, together with many of the older Scholastics, holds that images of Christ, nay even those of His holy Cross, 11 Or. de Imag., 2,:n. 17. Cir. a victim of cruel persecution, A. Billuart, De Incarn., diss. 23, art. D. 733- Sr uyis. 13 Ep. ad TIoa. Episc. Synad., 12 He was forcibly deposed by apud Hardouin, Concil., IV, 242. Emperor Leo the Isaurian and died 14 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, pp. 278 sqq. THE.WORSHIP OF IMAGES 167. are entitled to divine adoration (cultus latriae).° How is this apparent contradiction to be explained? Some modern theologians assume that the early Scholastics were unacquainted with the definition of Nicewa. We prefer the following explanation. The cultus latriae which St. Thomas demands for images of Christ and for His true Cross, is merely a relative worship, essentially distinct from the cultus latriae absolutus due to our Saviour Himself. The Angelic Doctor frequently in- sists on these two fundamental principles: (1) The rational creature alone is entitled to honor and reverence, and any reverence shown to an irrational creature must in some way or other be referred to a rational creature; qu. 25, art. 4: “Si ergo loquamur de ipsa cruce, in qua Christus cru- 15 Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 25, art. 3: “Duplex est motus (internus) in imaginem: unus quidem in ipsam imaginem, secundum quod res quae- dam est; alio modo in imaginem, in- quantum est imago alterius; et inter hos duos motus est haec differen- tia, quia primus motus, quo quis movetur in imaginem ut est res quaedam, est alius a motu qui est in rem; secundus autem motus, qui est in imaginem inquanium est imago, est unus et idem cum illo qui est in rem. Sic ergo dicendum est,’ quod imagini Christi, inquantum est res quaedam, puta lignum sculptum vel pictum, nulla reverentia habe- tur, quia reverentia nonnist ratio- nali naturae debetur. Relinquitur ergo quod exhibeatur ei reverentia solum inquantum est imago, et sic sequitur, quod eadem reverentia ex- hibeatur imagini Christi et ipsi Christo. Quum ergo Christus adore- tur adoratione latriae, consequens est, quod eius imago sit adoratione latriae adoranda,”’ ~St. Thomas con- sistently extends this principle to the true Cross of our Divine Saviour. Cfr. Summa Theol., 3a, cifixus est, utroque modo est a no- bis veneranda. Uno scil. modo, inquantum repraesentat nobis figu- ram Christi extenst in ea; alio modo ex contactu ad membra Christi et ex hoc, quod eius sanguine est per- fusa. Unde utroque modo adoratur eadem adoratione cum Christo, scil. adoratione latriae. Et propter hoc etiam crucem alloquimur et depre- camur quasi ipsum crucifixum”’ (as in the hymn “O crux, ave, spes unica’”’). He adds on the general subject of crucifixes (J. ¢.): “St vero loquamur de effigie crucis Christi in quacumque alia materia, puta lapidis vel ligni, argentt vel auri, sic_veneramur crucem tantum ut imaginem Christi, quam venera- mur adoratione latriae.” 16 Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 25, art. 4: “Honor seu reverentia non debetur nisi rationali naturae, crea- turae autem insensibil [i. e@., trra- tionali] non debetur honor vel reverentia nisi ratione rationalis naturae.” 168 APPENDIX (2) Adoration is due solely to God and can be given to no creature on its own account (7. e., absolutely).17 In teaching, therefore, that an image of Christ must be wor- shipped eadem adoratione as our Lord Himself, St. Thomas evidently conceives the adoration due to the image as a cultus latriae relativus, a worship which re- verts to Christ and consequently can no more be branded as idolatry than the honor rendered to a king’s image can be termed superstition. This teaching is in consonance with that of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which con- demns the worship of images only in so far as it is liable to degenerate into idolatry. It is true, however, that according to the Nicene Council there is something in the images themselves which entitles them to veneration, inasmuch as they are “ sacred objects” (res sacrae, dow) and as such must be treated with reverence. This St. Thomas. seems to have overlooked. 8B) lf the true Cross is entitled to a relative cultus latriae because it touched the sacred body of Christ and was sprinkled with His blood, why are we forbidden to exhibit a like worship to the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose connexion with our Divine Lord was so much more in- timate? St. Thomas answers this question as follows: “ The rational creature can be venerated for its own sake. And therefore divine worship (atria) is due to no mere rational creature. The Blessed Virgin is a mere rational 17 Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 25, art. 5: “Latria soli Deo debetur, nulli creaturae debetur latria, prout crea- turam secundum se [t. e. absolute] veneramur.”’ 18 Synod. Nicaen, II (a. 787): . . tta ut istis [imaginibus] sicut figurae pretiosae ac vivificae crucis et sanctis evangeliis et reliquis sa- cris monumentis, incensorum et lu- ee . minum oblatio ad harum honorem eficiendum exhibeatur. ... Imagi- nis enim honor ad primitivum tran- sit, et qui adorat imaginem, adorat in ea depicti subsistentiam.” (Den- zinger-Bannwart, n. 302. Cfr. on this subject Pesch, Praelect. Dog- mat., Vol. IV, 3rd ed., pp. 378 sq., Freiburg 1909.) THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES 169. creature and consequently not entitled to divine worship, but solely to the veneration called dulia, in a higher de- gree, however, than other creatures, inasmuch as she is the Mother of God; and for this reason we say that she is entitled not to any kind of dulia, but to hyperdulia.” ° Billuart points out that this hyperdulic worship is abso- lute and therefore more perfect than the purely relative cultus latriae, which may be exhibited to inanimate ob- jects.?° Thesis II: The pious veneration of holy images is licit and useful. This is also an article of faith. If those who adore images sin per exces- sum, those who deny the Catholic doctrine of the veneration of images sin per defectum. ‘The chief champions of the last-mentioned error were the Iconoclasts of the eighth century and the Zwing- lians and Calvinists,** together with a few minor sects, in the sixteenth. Against the Iconoclasts the Seventh Ecumenical Coun- cil of Nicza (A. D. 787) ?? defined that, ‘‘ as the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, so also the holy and venerable images — whether of color, or of stone, or of any other appropriate material—are suitably set up in 19 Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 25, art. 5: “‘Creatura rationalis est capax venerationts secundum seipsam [= absolute]. Et ideo nulli purae creaturae rationali debetur cultus latriae. Quum igitur beata Virgo sit pura creatura rationalis, non de- betur et adoratio latriae, sed solum veneratio duliae, eminentius tamen. quam ceteris creaturis, inquantum ipsa est mater Dei; et ideo dicitur quod debetur et non qualiscumque dulia, sed hyperdulia.’’ 20 Billuart, De Incarn.; diss. 23, art. 4. Cfr. De Lugo, De Myst. Incarn., disp. 35, sect. 2. 21Cfr;\Calvin’s Instit., 15:23. 1V; 9. 22 On this Council see A. For- tescue in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, pp. 622 sq. 170 APPENDIX the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and garments, on walls and tables, in houses and on roads: namely the image of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ and that of our immaculate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and those of the venerable angels and of all holy and pious men.” 78 The Council of Trent teaches: “ The images of Christ, and of His Virgin Mother, and of other Saints, are to be used and retained, especially in churches, and due honor and veneration is to be given them; not that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them, for which they are to be honored, or that anything is to be asked of them, or 23 Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 302: “Opifouev oty axpiBela mdon Kal éupedeia, maparAnciws Tro Tite ToU Tylov Kat fwomrowd oravpov dvaridecOat Tas certas Kal ayias eixévas, Tas €kK xpwudTwr Kat Ynpidos Kat érépas Ans émiry- delws éxovons, ev rats ayia Tov Ocov éxkAnoias, év lepois oKxevect kat éoOjo., Tolxous Te Kal caviow, olkots Te Kal 6d0is' THs Te Tov kuptov Kat Qeov kal cwrHpos hudv "Inco Xpicrov elxdvos, Kal THs axpdvrov SOecrolvys Huav Tihs ayias Oeordxov, Tintwy Tre ay- yéehwv, Kal mdavTwy aylwy Kat éalwy dvip@y. The current Latin translation renders this passage as follows: ‘‘ Definimus in omni certi- tudine ac diligentia, sicut figuram pretiosae ac vivificae crucis, ita venerabiles ac sanctas imagines proponendas tam quae de coloribus et tessellis, quam quae ex alia ma- teria congruenter in sanctis Dei ecclesiis, et sacris vasis et vestibus, et in parietibus ac tabulis, domibus et viis: tam videl. imaginem Domini Dei et Salvatoris nostri Iesu Christi quam intemeratae dominae nostrae Ss. Det genitricis, honorabiliumque videlicet imaginem. angelorum et omnium sanctorum simul et almorum vivorum. Quanto enim frequentius, etc.” (V. supra, p. 163.) The infinitive dyarlOecbat, which-is translated “ proponendas ”’ (sc. esse), means either: “‘[we de- fine] that they (elxévas) are set up,’ or (less in accordance with grammar) “that they should be set up.” Since mapamtAnoiws with the dative has the force of: “ with the same appropriateness as,” “ equally as’? we translate: “. .. that they are as appropriately set up [placed] Sieieyasi thes istseross’ ey eb her mase part of the sentence: ... ris Te Tov Kupiov . « « Xp.arov eikévos, is rendered by the Latin transla- tion according to the sense: tam The Greek gen- itive eixdvos seems to depend in a way on r@ rUmrw..., hardly on Tas eixdvas. It may be well to add that trys émiryndelws éxovons is Uns eritydelas ovons, or simply trAns émiryndeias. The Latin trans- lation somewhat obscures the mean- ing. It may be noted that this definition proved a source of in- spiration and a guiding principle to Christian artists for all time. THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES 171) that any confidence is to be placed in images, as was done | by the heathen of old who placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the originals which they represent; so that by the images we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads, and fall down, we adore Christ and venerate His Saints, whose likeness they represent.’ 74 It follows that the worship which we Catholics give to holy images is purely relative according to the originals represented, and this relative worship is either latreutic, dulic or hyperdulic, as the case may be. a) The Old Testament furnishes several in- stances in confirmation of the Catholic dogma of the veneration of images.?® Thus Yahweh Himself commanded: “Thou shalt make also two cherubims of beaten gold, on the two sides of the oracle. . . . Thence will I give orders, and will speak to thee over the propitiatory, and from the midst of the two cherubims, which shall be upon the ark of the testimony, all things which I will command the children of Israel by thee.” 7° For the Ark of the Covenant the Jews had the 24Sess. XXV_ (Denzinger-Bann- wart, n. 986): “‘Imagines porro Christi, Deiparae Virginis et aliorum Sanctorum in templis praesertim ha- bendas et retinendas eisque debitum honorem et venerationem impertien- dam, non quod credatur inesse aliqua in tis divinitas vel virtus, propter quam sint colendae, vel quod ab eis sit aliquid petendum vel quod fiducia in imaginibus sit figenda, velutt olim fiebat a gentibus quae in idolis spem suam collocabant; sed 12 quoniam honos qui eis exhibetur, refertur ad prototypa quae iilae repraesentant, ita ut per imagines, quas osculamur, etc.” (ut supra, Pp. 142). 25 Attention was called to this fact as early as 780 by Pope Ha- drian I, in his reply to the Greek Emperor Constantine and his mother Irene. Cfr. Mansi, Concil., XIII 528 sqq. 26 Ex. XXV, 18, 22. 172 APPENDIX greatest veneration. Cfr. Jos. VII, 6: “Josue rent his garments, and fell flat on the ground be- fore the ark of the Lord until the evening, both he and all the ancients of Israel: and they put dust upon their heads.” Another example in point isthe’ brazen: serpent.) Numb. XX 3: “And the Lord said to him: Make a brazen serpent, and set it up for a sign: Whosoever being struck shall look on it, shall live.’ This serpent, St. John tells us, was a type of the cruci- hed (Redeemer. Ctr Johnid]t) taze Asi Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life ever- lasting.” If the Jews were permitted to venerate the promised Messias under the image of a brazen serpent, why should we Christians be for- bidden to adore Him under the figure of the Good Shepherd or the Crucified Saviour? The Moors and Turks could hardly have chosen a more characteristic way of showing their contempt for our Divine Lord than by trampling upon the crucifix. What is true of the images of our Lord is also true, servataé proportione, of the images of His Blessed Mother and the Saints.?" b) The Second Ecumenical Council (Niczea, A. D. 787) introduces its teaching on image worship | 27 Cfr. L. Janssens, Christologia, p. 811, Freiburg 1891. THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES 173 by the remark that, in stating the Catholic doc- trine in the way it does, it keeps to “the royal highway of tradition,” and concludes: “For thus the teaching of our holy Fathers, that is to say, the tradition of the holy Catholic Church, will be made effective.” 78 Pope Hadrian I (A. D. 780), in his dogmatic epistle to Constantine and Irene, ap- pealed to the traditional practice of the Roman Church and quoted in its support a considerable number of ancient Fathers, e. g., Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Ambrose, and Jerome.”® a) Thus St. Cyril of Alexandria says in his commen- tary on the Psalms: “Though we make images of saintly men, we do not venerate them as gods, but merely wish to be inspired by their example to imitate them. But the image of Christ we make in order to fire our hearts with love for Him. Assuredly we do not adore a perishable image or the likeness of a perishable man. But since God, without changing Himself, condescended to become man, we represent Him as a man, though we are well aware that He is by nature God. We do not, therefore, call the image God, but we know that He whom it represents is God.” *° Theodoret relates that the Christians i Rome erected statuettes of St. Simon Stylites (d. 479) at the entrance 28 Sic enim robur obtinet SS. Epiphanius, and Augustine see F. Pairum nostrorum doctrina, t% @. X. Funk, Kirchengeschichiliche Ab-. traditio sanctae catholicae Ecclesiae.” handlungen und Untersuchungen, (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 302.) Vol. I, pp. 349 sqq. 29 Mansi, 1. c. On the peculiar 330 In Ps., 113, 16. attitude of Eusebius of Cesarea, 174 APPENDIX of their workshops, in order “thereby to assure them- selves of protection and safety.” * The lack of examples showing that the veneration of images was practiced in the first three centuries, which used to be deplored by Catholic theologians,®* has been supplied by the recent discovery in the Roman catacombs of images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, the holy Apos- tles Peter and Paul, and other Saints.*? B) While Tradition leaves no doubt that the venera- tion of the images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Saints (as well as of the angels) ** has always been considered licit in the Church, the case is differ- ent with representations of God and the Trinity. With regard to these we can quote no such binding definitions as those we have adduced in reference to the former class of holy images.** Nevertheless, present- day theologians are agreed as to the permissibility of making and venerating images of God and the Trinity, provided no attempt is made to picture the Divine Na- ture itself. It is in this sense that we must interpret the warning of St. John of Damascus: “If we were to make an image of the invisible God, we should in truth go wrong; for it is impossible to make a statue of one who is without body, invisible, boundless, and formless.” * When this danger is excluded, the Divinity may be pic- tured either by way of a historical theophany (e. g., the Yahweh-Angel appearing in the flaming fire of the bush) or allegorically (as, for instance, when, to symbolize His gebarerin Maria auf den Kunstdenk- 81 Hist. Rel., c. 26. miilern in den Katakomben, Frei- 82 Cfr. Petavius, De Incarn., n. * s06. 33 Cfr. Wilpert, Die Malereien in den Katakomben Roms, Freiburg 1903; Liell, Die Darstellungen der allerseligsten Jungfrau und Gottes- burg 1887. 84 Synod. Nicaen. II, supra p. 170. 35 Cfr. Billuart, De Incarn., diss. 23, art.: '35-S4. 36 Or. de Imag., 2, Ne 5- THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES 175 eternity, God is represented as an old man,*? or His omniscience is emblemed by a seeing eye**), etc. Pope Alexander VIII (A. D. 1690) condemned the prop- osition: “It is wrong to exhibit in a Christian church a picture representing God the Father in a sitting pos- ture.” 2° With regard to representations of the Blessed Trinity, Pius VI protested against the sweeping condem- nation of the pseudo-council of Pistoja as follows: “The prohibition which generally and indiscriminately ranges representations of the inscrutable Trinity among those images which should be banished from the Church because they furnish an occasion of error to the un- learned, is too general in its terms and therefore rash and contrary to the pious custom practiced by the Church ; for there are representations of the Trinity which are universally approved and may be safely permitted.” *° The Pope’s remark does, however, contain a warning to Christian artists to be careful in depicting the Trinity. The safest policy is to adhere to the traditional and ap- proved symbols. It would certainly be improper to rep- resent the triune God as a man with three heads or three faces.** ' Catechists and preachers should instruct the faithful in the meaning of current symbolic images of God and the Trinity.* c) Though there is no room for dispute as re- gards the permissibility of the veneration of -37 Cfr. Dan. VII, 9. capita vel tres facies.” (Billuart, 38 Cfr. Ecclus. XXIII, 27. lc.) j 39 Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1315. 42On the iconography of the 40 Constit. ‘“ Auctorem fidet,” Deity and Trinity in ancient Chris- A.D. 1794 (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. tian art, cfr. C. M. Kaufmann, 1569). ¥ Christliche Archédologie, pp. 392 41“ Si pingeretur Trinitas sub s4., Paderborn 1905. specie unius hominis habentis trie 176 | APPENDIX images, theologians disagree as to the manner in which they should be venerated. De Lugo dis- tinguishes two separate questions: (1) Whether holy images may be venerated, and (2) How they should be venerated. The first question, he says, is in dispute between Catholics and heretics, the second, among Catholics. The first is easier of solution than the second.* a) Some Catholic divines (notably Durandus and Al- phonsus a Castro) hold that holy images are not in them- selves worthy of veneration, but merely furnish an occa- sion to honor their originals. This opinion militates both against common sense and the defined teaching of the Church. A devoted son who kisses the image of his mother obviously honors the image itself, because of its relation to one who is near and dear to him. Similarly a Catholic uncovers his head and kneels before the statue of a Saint, and not before the Saint himself whom the statue represents, thus showing that he regards the image as something more than a mere ornament or means of in- struction. The official teaching of the Church is perfectly plain on this point. The Seventh Ecumenical Council refers to the images of the Saints as “venerable and holy,” while that of Trent declares them to be entitled to honor and reverence.**