The Rudeness and Reverence of Geoffrey Hill’s Mariology

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-165
Author(s):  
Jesse Russell
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
British History ◽  
Blessed Virgin Mary ◽  
The World ◽  
Simone Weil ◽  
Geoffrey Hill

Abstract Due to his seemingly reactionary politics and theology, the recently deceased English lyricist Geoffrey Hill has courted controversy throughout his life. However, while Hill’s work is replete with qualified nostalgia for premodern British history, and he does treat a number of Christian themes in his work, the great British poet defies easy categorisation. Moreover, drawing from the theology of Simone Weil, Rowan Williams, and others, Hill’s work is saturated with a profound awareness of the fallen state of human nature. One of the most profound tropes Hill uses as a representative of what could be called Original Sin is the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a tormented believer and a poet very aware of the fallenness of the world, Hill’s depiction of Mary reveals that Hill is a Christian poet who does not fall into ready categories.

‘Wandering Nuns’: The Return of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the South of England, 1862–1945

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-396
Author(s):  
M. Gregory Kirkus
Keyword(s):  
Young Woman ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
The South ◽  
Blessed Virgin Mary ◽  
The World ◽  
The Catholic Church

‘Woods, M. Joseph died ye 20 April 1822, the last of ye Ladies of ye Establishment’So ends the register of the convent founded in Hammersmith in 1669, and with the death of Sister Joseph the Institute of Mary became extinct in the south of England. But in distant Belfast the story of its revival was already taking shape. On 1st April 1812 a little girl, Mary Petronilla, was born there to a Protestant Doctor Barratt and his wife. We know nothing of her childhood, but it is thought that as a young woman she taught singing in a Loreto convent. About the year 1835 she was received into the Catholic Church, and so embarked upon a career that was to have far-reaching effects. The presence of a Roman Catholic daughter may have been embarrassing to the doctor’s household, or perhaps it was just the desire to learn German and to see the world that prompted Mary Barratt to follow the advice of the Loreto Sisters and to accept a teaching post advertised in Augsburg. There she not only learned German in return for giving English lessons, but she observed religious life as lived in the oldest house of the Institute. Strict as the régime was (the nuns rose at 4.30 am. all the year round) she fell in love with it and asked to be received into the novitiate. On 10th September 1844 she was clothed in the habit and given the name Sister Petronilla, though this was later changed to Sister Ignatius.

How Modern Biological Taxonomy Sheds Light on the Incarnation

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 163-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis Dumsday
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Human Lineage ◽  
De Trinitate ◽  
Blessed Virgin Mary ◽  
History Of ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Ex Nihilo

One question asked repeatedly in the history of Christology is the following: given that the incarnation was God’s chosen method of redeeming us, why did God become human by the cooperation of the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Why not just create a human body and soul ex nihilo and simultaneously with that creation have God the Son assume this new instance of human nature?  In answer, Augustine for instance (De Trinitate, bk. 13, ch. 18) argues that the latter option would have been a legitimate means of incarnation, but that it was not as fitting as the method actually employed.  Aquinas agrees (Summa Theologica IIIa, q. 4, art. 6).  By contrast, John of Damascus (De Fide Orthodoxa, bk. 3, ch. 12) seems to think that the ex nihilo option would not have constituted a genuine assumption of human nature, such that redemption required the cooperation of the Theotokos.  I argue that insights provided by contemporary biology support St. John’s perspective, insofar as modern biological taxonomy suggests that lineal descent is a necessary condition for belonging to a species.  As such, to take on a genuinely human nature God had to enter into the existing human lineage; creating a new ‘human’body and soul ex nihilo would not have sufficed.  

scholarly journals Mary Ward's English Institute: The Apostolate As Self-Affirmation?

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Lux-Sterritt
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
New Era ◽  
Blessed Virgin Mary ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The World ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
The Church

Mary Ward (1585–1645) is known as the foundress of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an Order of women which continues to educate thousands of girls around the world. During the first decades of the seventeenth century, her foundation was a religious venture which aimed to transform the Catholic mission of recovery into one that catered for women as well as men. It maintained clandestine satellites on English soil and opened colleges on the Continent, in towns such as St Omer (1611), Liège (1616), Cologne and Trier (1620–1), Rome (1622), Naples and Perugia (1623), Munich and Vienna (1627) and Pressburg and Prague (1628). There, it trained its own members and undertook the education of externs and boarders. The Institute's vocation was not only to maintain the faith where it was already present but also to propagate it; as such, it went far beyond the accepted sphere of the feminine apostolate and its members were often labelled as rebels who strove to shake off the shackles of post-Tridentine religious life. To some modern historians, Mary Ward was an ‘unattached, roving, adventurous feminist’; to others, she was a foundress whose initiative deliberately set out to lay tradition to rest and begin a new era for the women in the Church.

Iconostasis of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Nakonechne village - the most complete iconostasis ensemble of the XVI century

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
Mariia Helytovych
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Xvii Century ◽  
Blessed Virgin Mary ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

The article contains an analysis of the iconostasis of the Assumption of Mary Church located in the vil. Nakonechne (Yavoriv district, Lviv region), which represents the most fully preserved iconostasis ensemble of the XVI century. For the first time, its reconstruction was completed taking into account all saved icons. The article deals with stylistic, iconographic and artistic features of this ensemble, as well as its connection with other iconostases of that time. More precisely, the dating of the monument is argued. In the article, the author suggests to consider an ensemble from Nakonechne as a phenomenon in the history of Ukrainian icon painting, which reflected the most characteristic tendencies that took place in the painting of the second half of the XVI century. The author traces his influence on the iconography of the end of the XVI – the beginning of the XVII century

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