The Russian Spiritual Verses on the Mother of God

The Russian Spiritual Verses are a repertoire of hymns to be sung, which developed over centuries in an oral culture and were performed primarily by wandering minstrels. They are strikingly free of close adherence to the Gospels. We hear of Christ being baptized as an infant, and by his Mother. There are moving laments of the Virgin at the foot of the Cross, in which she laments that her Son will be unable to look after her in her old age, and Christ consoles her with a promise that he will set up her image in every church and pray to it himself. Other hymns attribute to the Virgin an important role in the bestowal of life on earth and at the Last Judgement. The Verses show an imagination untrammelled by literary texts and often inspired by icons rather than the written word.

Introduction

Mary is important in Christianity and Islam. Orthodox and Catholic Christianity can be argued to be intrinsically Marian. Theological reflection on Mary draws its logic primarily from the bringing together of the Prologue of John’s Gospel, as a Christian restatement of the creation in Genesis, with the first two chapters of Luke. Then Mary as an historical figure in the heritage of Israel is taken up into an eternal and cosmic space in which she participates in the events of redemption as the new Eve. The relationship between Christ and Mary leads to important debates in Christian traditions, and there are of course issues that arise for a modern gender analysis. The introduction moves on to doctrines of Mary, relationships between the denominations, and both ecclesiastical and popular devotion/veneration. It refers to each of the contributors of the book and shows how they interrelate in the volume as a whole.

Mary and Modernity

Because the Reformation was unfavourably disposed toward expressions of the cosmological, mystical, symbolic, and aesthetic dimensions of the Virgin Mary’s spiritual presence, and because secular versions of several concepts in the Reformation became central to emergent modernity, the work of modernizing the Catholic Church at Vatican II resulted in streamlining Mary’s presence and meaning in favour of a more literal, objective, and strictly text-based version, which is simultaneously more Protestant and more modern. In the decades since Vatican II, however, the modern, mechanistic worldview has been dislodged by discoveries in physics and biology indicating that physical reality, the Creation, is composed entirely of dynamic interrelatedness. This perception also informs the Incarnation, the Resurrection, Redemption, transubstantiation, and the full spiritual presence of Mary with its mystical and cosmological dimensions. Perhaps the rigid dividing lines at Vatican II will evolve into new possibilities in the twenty-first century regarding Mary and modernity.

Mary in the Hymnody of the East

Beginning with a notice of the major Marian hymnal elements in the New Testament text, this study goes on to consider how the most ancient Christian tradition of celebrating the role of the Virgin Mary in the salvific events the Church commemorates at prayer runs on in an unbroken line into the earliest liturgical examples from the Byzantine Greek liturgy. The study exegetes some of the chief liturgical troparia addressed to the Theotokos in the Eastern Orthodox Church ritual books. It analyses some of the more famous and renowned poetic acclamations of the Virgin in Byzantine literary tradition, such as the Sub Tuum Praesidium, the Akathist, and the Nativity Kontakion of Romanos the Melodist, but also goes on to show how the minor Theotokia (or ritual verses in honour of the Virgin), taken from the Divine Liturgy and from the Eastern Church’s Hours of Prayer, all consistently celebrate the Mother of God’s role in the salvific work of Christ in the world.

The Global Network of Deviant Revelatory Marian Movements

This chapter discusses contemporary deviant—contested or condemned—Marian devotional movements and cultures, situated at and concentrated around modern apparitional sites, which collectively represent an implicit Marian network. This devotional network is largely independent from—or runs parallel to—mainstream Marian devotion, although the separation is not absolute as interaction with the institutional Church continues to take place. Most of these deviant revelatory devotions have emerged since the 1960s. Spiritually and devotionally, they are created, shaped, and propagated informally from the bottom up by the visionaries, the cult leadership, and in particular the associated communities of often dissenting, conservative, or (neo-) traditionalist devotees. The chapter identifies and describes this network as it has manifested itself on a transnational and global scale on the basis of fieldwork examples.

The Idea of Mary as ‘Sister’ in Carmelite Mariology

The emphasis on the central importance of the idea of Mary as Theotokos with its profound Christological, ecclesiological, and soteriological implications, has perhaps resulted in the relative neglect of the idea of Mary as ‘sister’. The force of calling Mary ‘sister’ is very significant for a clear understanding of the reality of human salvation and it is not simply a reminder that Mary was human and gives an example to humanity, but that the flesh she gave to the Logos is the reason why humanity is truly redeemed. Mary is the nexus or fulcrum upon which human salvation hinges. Over the centuries the only group in the western Church to give much attention to Mary as sister has been the Carmelite Order.

The Mother of God in Finnish Orthodox Women’s Lived Piety

The chapter analyses two groups of Eastern Orthodox women in Finland and their relationship to the Mother of God. The analysis is based on sixty-two ethnographic interviews and nineteen written narratives. The focus is on two groups in two marginal contexts within Orthodoxy: women converted from the Lutheran Church and the indigenous Skolt Sámi women in northeastern Lapland (all cradle Orthodox). Both contexts reflect a broader ethno-cultural process of identity formation. The converted women tend to reflect on their image of the Mother of God in relation to their previous Lutheran identity, in which the Virgin Mary plays a marginal role. In Skolt Sámi Orthodoxy, the figure of the Mother of God is less accentuated than St Tryphon, their patron saint. The Orthodox faith and tradition in general have been central for the Skolts in the course of their traumatic history.

Mariology at and after the Second Vatican Council

The formal treatment of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) was solemnly promulgated on 21 November 1964 as the eighth and final of the council’s most foundational document Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. There was intense debate over whether there should be a separate document on Mary or whether it should be included in the document on the Church. By a margin of just forty votes it was decided to include the document on Mary in the constitution on the Church. There was a constant tension between presenting Mary in terms of her analogy with Christ and her analogy with the Church. After eight drafts, a remarkable balance was achieved. While the Council Fathers had no intention of saying a final word on Mary, they presented a biblical-dogmatic treatise that provides a solid foundation for teaching about Mary, which continued to be developed and commented on by the postconciliar popes, especially by Pope Saint John Paul II.

Mary in Medieval Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin

By the later Middle Ages, every man, woman, or child, cleric or lay, who could read would have known the Hours or ‘Little Office’ of the Virgin Mary. Even those who could not read the Office in full would have known to recite its opening antiphon (Ave Maria) at the appropriate hours of the day. This chapter argues that a close reading of the texts of the Hours themselves is necessary to appreciate fully the place that Mary held in the hearts and minds of her medieval devotees. Through the hymns, antiphons, and psalms that make up the core of her Office, Mary is revealed as above all the temple in which God made himself present to the world, the Lord whom the psalmist called upon to make his face shine on his people. It was with this understanding of Mary that her medieval devotees sought to serve her through the recitation of her Hours.

Original Holiness

The nineteenth century saw an upsurge in Marian devotion and Mariological enquiry in Western Europe. Of particular note is the Bull of Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (1854), which defines the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as an article of Catholic faith. Developments of this kind may be seen partly as an example of the Catholic Church’s reaction against increasing secularization. However, methodologically, Marian theology was part of the tendency towards a more historical approach to theology, with greater emphasis on the participation of the ordinary faithful in the articulation of doctrine. Attention is drawn to the importance of the tradition in which Mary is identified with the Old Testament figure of Wisdom, and the relevance of this for the understanding of Mary’s pre-election as the Mother of God, immaculately conceived. Finally, there is discussion of some of the nineteenth century’s most prominent Mariological thinkers, such as Newman and Scheeben.