Baroque Catholic Theologies of Christ and Mary
This essay provides an historical account of the simultaneous development of Mariology and Christology in the early modern period. The main Thomist and Scotist arguments regarding the Incarnation and Immaculate Conception are discussed, together with the many “strict” and “mitigated” variants propounded by major theologians of religious orders, including the Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Mercedarians, and others; and the increasing trend toward the theological position of Duns Scotus is shown. Several of these now-forgotten theologies on the absolute primacy of Christ and Mary integrated the rather scattered Mariological reflections of the medieval world into the various baroque syntheses that shaped much of nineteenth-century theological debate, one result of which was the declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854.