VIRGIN
464
VIRGIN
motive, even the recent "Miracle" of Max Reinhardt,
the wordless play which in 1912 took London by
storm, persuaded many how much of true religious
fceUng must have underlain even the more extrava-
gant conceptions of the Middle Ages. The most
renowned English shrines of Our Lady, that of Wal-
singham in Norfolk, was in a sense an anticipation of
the still more famous I.oreto. Walsingham pro-
fessed to preserve, not indeed the Holy House itself,
but a model of its construction upon measurements
brought from Nazareth in the eleventh century. The
dimensions of the Walsingham Sant a Casa were noted
by WiUiam of Worcester, and, as Waterton points
out, they do not agree with those of Loreto. Walsing-
ham measured 23 ft . 6 in. by 12 ft. 10 in. ; Loreto, 31 ft.
3 in. by 13 ft. 4 in. (Pietas Mariana Britannica, II,
163-4).
In any case the homage paid to Our Lady during the later Middle Ages was universal. Even so unor- thodox a writer as John Wychf , in one of his earher sermons, says: "It seems to me impossible that we should obtain the reward of Heaven without the help of Mary. There is no sex or age, no rank or position, of anyone in the whole human race, which has no need to call for the help of the Holy Virgin" (Lechler, " Wychf ", Eng. tr., p. 200). So again the intense feehng evoked from the twelfth to the sixteenth century over the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is only an additional tribute to the importance which the whole subject of Mariology possessed in the eyes of the most learned bodies of Christendom. To give even a brief sketch of the various practices of Marian devo- tion in the Middle Ages would be impossible here. Most of them, for example the Rosary, the Angelus, the Salve Regina etc. and the more important festi- vals, are discussed under separate headings. It will be sufficient to note the prevalence of the wearing of beads of all possible fashions and lengths, some of fifteen decades, some of ten, some of six, five, three, or one, as an article of ornament in every attire; the mere repetition of Hail Marys to be counted by the aid of such Pater Nosters, or beads, was common in the twelfth century, before the time of St. Dominic; the motive of meditating on assigned "mysteries" did not come into use until 300 years later. Further, we must note the almost universal custom of leaving legacies to have a Marj'-Mass, or Mass of Our Lady, celebrated daily at a particular altar, as well as to maintain lights to burn continually before a particular statue or shrine. Still more interesting were the foundations left by will to have the Salve Regina or other anthems of Our Lady sung after Compline at the Lady altar, while hghts were burned before her statue. The "salut" common to France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries formed only a later development of this practice, and from these last we have almost certainly derived our compara- tively modern devotion of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
Modern Times. — Only a few isolated points can be touched upon in the development of Marian devotion since the Reformation. Foremost among these may be noticed the general introduction of the Litany of Loreto, which though, as we have seen, it had precursors in other lands as remote as Ireland in the ninth century, not to speak of isolated forms in the later Middle Ages, itself only came into common use towards the close of the sixteenth century. The same may also bo said of any general adoption of the second part of the Hail Mary. Another manifestation of great importance, which also like the last followed close after the Council of Trent, was the insti- tution of sodalities of the Blessed Virgin, particu- larly in houses of education, a movement mainly promoted by the influence and example of the Society of .Jesus, whose members did so nuich, by the consecra- tion of studies and other similar devices, to place the
work of education under the patronage of Mary, the
Queen of Purity. To this period is also due, with
some occasional exceptions, the multiphcation in the
calendar of minor feasts of the Blessed Virgin, such
as that of the Holy Name of Mary, thefestum B. V. M.
ad Nives, de Mercede, of the Rosary, de Bono Con-
silio, AuxiUum Christianorum, etc. Still later in date
(seventeenth centurj' at earhest) is the adoption of the
custom of consecrating the month of May to the Blessed
Virgin by special observances, though the practice
of reciting the Rosary every day during the month of
October can hardly be said to be older than the Rosary
Encychcals of Leo XIII. Not much controversy was
maintained regarding the Immaculate Conception
after the indirect pronouncement of the Council of
Trent, but the dogma was only defined by Pius IX in
1854. Undoubtedly, however, the greatest stimulus
to Marian devotion in recent times has been afforded
by the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin in 1858 at
Lourdes, and in the numberless supernatural favours
granted to pilgrims, both there and at other shrines,
that derive from it. The "miraculous medal" con-
nected with the church of Notre-Dame des Victoires
at Paris also deserves mention, as giving a great
stimulus to this form of piety in the first half of the
nineteenth century.
Lehneh, Die MaHenverehrung in den ersten Jahrhunderten (Stuttgart, 1886) ; Newman. Letter to E. B. Pusey (Oxford, 1868), recently translated and re-edited in French by Cabrol; Nettbert, Marie dans I'Eglise antenicienne (Paris, 1908) : Friedhich, Die Mariologie des hi. Auguslin (Tiibingen, 1907); Beissel, Marien- verehrung in Dcutschland (2 vols., Freiburg, 1907, 1910) ; LEM.4NN,. La Vierge Marie dans I'histoire de VOrient Chretien (Paris, 1904); Delattre, Le Culte de la Sainte Vierge Marie en Afrique (Paris, 1907): RoHArLT de Fleuhy, La Sainte Vierge (Paris, 1878), etill the best collection of drawings of original monuments con- nected with Marian devotion; Waterton, Pietas Mariana Brit' anniea (London, 1879); Bridgett, Doury of Mary (London, 1886) ; Kronenberg, Maria's Heerlijkheid in Nederland (Amster- dam, 1905 ); Meschler, Marien Maiandacht in Der Katholik^
XXXIX (Mainz, 1909), 100, 171, 262; Folk, Marianum Mogun- tinum (Mainz, 1906) : Drochon, Histoire des pelerinages fran^ais de la Sainte Vierge (Paris, 1890) ; Mrfioz, Iconografia delta Madon' na (Florence, 1905) ; Barrett, Ancient Scottish devotion to Mary in Amer. Cath. Quart. Rei<.. XXX, 311-31 (1905); Rocsselot, La S. Vierge dans la poisie francaise du moyen dge in Rev. du clergi /rancais, XLII (Paris, 1905, 457-81); Lepitre, La Vierge Marie dans la litterature fransaise et proien^ale du M. A. in Universit6 Cath., L (Lyons, 1905, 51-91); Nesbitt, Mary in the lit. of Anglo- Saion PeriodiD Amer. Bccles. Rev., XL (Philadelphia, 1909), 513- 24; Chaine, L'ivolution de fart Marial in Eludes, CVII (Paris, 1906), 289, 454, 621; Livios, The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries (London, 1893), uncritical; Krebs, Salve Regina in Theol. Quartalschrift, LXXXVIII (Tubingen, 1906), 74-81; Manreba, La Virgeii Maria en la litteratura His- pafla (Rome, 1905); Siebert, Madonnendarstellung in der altni«- derlandische Kunst (Strasburg, 1906); Ventcri, La Madonna (Milan, 1900).
Herbert Thdrston.
Virgin Mary, The Blessed, is the name of the mother of Jesus Christ, the mother of God.
A. Name of Mary. — The Hebrew form of the name is mirySm, denoting in the Old Testament only the sister of Moses. In I Par., iv, 17, the Massoretic text appUes the same name to a son of Jalon, but, as the Septuagint version transcribes this name as MapiiK, we must infer that the orthography of the Hebrew text has been altered by the transcribers. The same version renders miryam by Mopiif^, a form analogous to the SjTiac and Aramaic word Maryam. In the New Testament the name of the Virgin Mary is always Mapti/i, excepting in the Vatican Codex and the Codex Bezae followed by a few critics who read Mapfo in Luke, ii, 19. Possibly the Evangelists kept the archaic form of the name for the Blessed Virgin, so as to distinguish her from the other women who bore the same name. The Vulgate renders the name by Maria, both in the Old Testament and the New; .Tosephus (Ant. Jud., II, ix, 4) changes the name to MapiiMA";.
It is ;intecedently probable that God should have chosen for Mary a name suitable to her high dignity. What has been said about the form of the name Mary shows that for its meaning we roust investigate the
