‘God made [Mary] an advocate, a helper, an aid, a participant, a lady [over] the world, a queen of heaven, a queen of mercy, the one next to him’—thus Johann Geiler, popular preacher in the city of Strasbourg who died in 1510, sums up the significance of the Virgin Mary in a sermon on the feast of her Assumption (Geiler 1515: 189v). Mary, the queen of heaven and the most powerful intercessor among all the saints, was the focus of intense piety and devotion at the turn of the sixteenth century. She played a central role in the life of Christians, both in private devotions and in public ritual, in civic life and throughout the cycle of the church year. Her importance can hardly be overstated, whether one finds the devotion excessive and filled with superstitious belief and behaviour (as did Erasmus and Luther), or expressive of a lively and heart-felt faith. Luther, of course, found much to criticize and reject in the cult and devotion to Mary. His crisis of faith and theological reevaluation of the Church’s teachings led him to produce an almost entirely new way of living and worshipping as a Christian, with new prayers, hymns, liturgies, catechisms, and religious instruction, even new ways to understand religious images and pageantry. And although he maintained a warm, if transformed, devotion to Mary, his understanding of her role as the Mother of God and foremost of saints was dramatically different from the late medieval understanding, which through his influence on Lutheran areas had the long-term effect of reducing Mary’s importance in the Christian life and her visibility to Christians.
In one of the most popular of medieval legends, the Archdeacon Theophilus, unfairly deposed by his bishop, sells his soul to the devil in exchange for revenge upon his enemy. Theophilus was duly appointed bishop, but the price exacted was too high—he suffered great fear of punishment and eternal death, having denied both Christ and the Virgin Mary. In desperation and repentance he prayed to Mary for forgiveness and aid. After the proper penitential period Mary agreed to intercede for him, and forced the devil to relinquish the contract. Theophilus was saved, and died in the saving embrace of Mary and the Church. This scene, frequently reproduced in art, poetry, and drama (also the basis for the legend of Faust), underlines one of the main reasons for the popularity of Mary in the later Middle Ages and the extensive devotion to her. As the merciful and powerful Mother of God, Mary had the ability to intercede for Christians with Christ, and even to save them of her own accord, if popular legend was believed.
In late medieval Europe, the saints, and particularly Mary, were ubiquitous in daily life, with little distinction between sacred and secular spaces. People attended masses and other liturgies, and participated (to various extents) in the sacraments, but also expressed devotion to Mary and celebrated stories of her life and continued miraculous presence in pilgrimages and processions. They observed and honoured images and statues of Mary within churches, on altarpieces and in stained glass, but also carved into houses and at roadside shrines. They prayed the rosary and sang the ‘Salve’ and other antiphons both in churches and at home. Devotion to Mary was woven into the very fabric of everyday life in a complex pattern that defies easy description.
The structure of devotion to Mary was governed by the great feasts celebrating the events of her life. Four feasts, Mary’s Nativity (8 September), the Annunciation of Christ (25 March), Mary’s Purification (2 February), and her Assumption (15 August), had been celebrated in the Church for many centuries. Mary’s Presentation in the Temple (21 November), the Visitation (2 July), and her Conception (8 December) were more recently established festivals. Several of these events from Mary’s life were scriptural—the Annunciation, Visitation (her trip to visit Elizabeth), and Purification commemorate events recorded in the Gospel of Luke. The other stories that fleshed out Mary’s life further, detailing her family background and parentage, her wider kinship relations, and her later life and eventual death, were recorded in other non-scriptural popular texts, especially the second-century Protevangelium of James. This source provided information on Mary’s family, birth, and upbringing. The most controversial element of Mary’s life story in the later medieval period was her conception, that is, whether or not she was conceived in the normal manner or was somehow preserved or cleansed from sin at (or after) her conception. The Feast of Mary’s Conception celebrated her sinless conception, but many prominent theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) were opposed to the idea on the grounds that if Mary was conceived without sin, she had no need of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. The Franciscan Duns Scotus (d. 1308) solved the thorny issue, at least in the eyes of the majority, by arguing that Mary had been preserved from sin through God’s special grace. However, this doctrine was not made official until 1854, so theological debate continued.
Finer points of theological debate would have had little impact on popular piety. Vernacular sermons, to the extent we have record of them, did not often repeat subtle points of theology, but generally encouraged emotional reactions and greater devotion to Mary and the saints. Donna Ellington notes that ‘preaching was one of the most powerful forces shaping and disseminating Marian piety’, particularly in cities (2001: 27). The mendicant orders, in particular the Franciscans, greatly influenced Marian piety through preaching and promoting particular devotions. They established the Feast of the Visitation in 1263, and promoted the ‘Angelus’, the practice of repeating the Ave Maria at the threefold ringing of the evening curfew bell (Ellington 2001: 29). Sermons from the later medieval period especially stressed the humanity of Mary, her humility, her human emotions, and her motherliness, both to Christ and to all Christians. But at the same time, sermons frequently stressed Mary’s power as an intercessor and her exalted position as Queen of Heaven, and encouraged listeners to turn to her in times of need or temptation.
Along with sermons, the feasts of Mary would have been celebrated with full days of masses, prayer, and song, including the Salve Regina, a popular antiphon that celebrated Mary as ‘mother of mercy’ and ‘our life, sweetness, and hope’ (Heal 2007: 38). Altarpieces, painted with detailed scenes and images of Mary and Christ, would be opened, and processions of relics and images would wind through the church, its grounds, and city streets. At the Feast of the Purification, also known as Candlemas, candles would be blessed, while at the Assumption bundles of herbs were blessed—these items were to be used for home devotions, but also were commonly thought to ward off diseases and protect farms and livestock (Heal 2007: 26–7).
Even outside of festivals, late medieval Christians would have been surrounded by images and reminders of Mary. Within churches, statues and paintings kept Mary constantly before the eyes of churchgoers. Apart from representations of her life story, Mary was often presented in images holding the infant Jesus, sometimes with her mother St Anne in a common form, the Anna Selbdritt. Her representation as the Woman of the Apocalypse, recalling imagery from the book of Revelation, presented Mary as a symbol of the Church, and brought to mind her immaculate conception in her defeat of Satan. The iconography of the pietá, or sorrowing mother holding her dead son, was also common, and Mary was often portrayed as the Mater Dolorosa in imagery and song (Heal 2007: 31–2). The statues of Mary were often carried in procession, and could be richly decorated with robes, veils, crowns, rosaries, and other votive gifts (Heal 2007: 37). Images of Mary could be found in chapels and pilgrimage sites, but also on road sides, in town squares, and even on the corners of houses, provided both as protective spirits and convenient street guides (Heal 2007: 76).
But Mary was not only in church and the town market square: she was also an object of personal and private devotion, especially through Books of Hours (for people with some means, and perhaps some literacy) and rosaries (available to almost everyone) (Ellington 2001: 33). The rosary devotion had its earliest forms in the twelfth century, and was based upon the Ave Maria, which by this time included both the angel’s greeting to Mary at the Annunciation and Elizabeth’s at the Visitation. The term ‘rosary’ itself derives from Rosencranz, a garland of roses, which the repeated prayers of the devotion were thought to weave for Mary (Winston-Allen 1997: 3–6). As it developed, the rosary came to include meditations upon the lives of Christ and Mary, usually divided into series of joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries. This easily accessible personal devotion influenced a large body of literature, hymns, songs, and visual arts, but was also incorporated into social groups as well. In the late fifteenth century, several confraternities were founded with the rosary devotion as their core activity—the confraternity founded in Cologne in 1475 was (quite unusually) open to all, rich or poor, male or female, and quickly gained thousands of members.
Mary was virtually omnipresent in the lives of late medieval Christians. She was the powerful Queen of Heaven, constantly interceding for those devoted to her with her Son. She was also the fully human mother, understanding human joys and sorrows, suffering at the foot of the cross and sharing her Son with all Christians. In the writings of Luther’s older contemporary and mentor, Johannes von Paltz (c. 1445–1511), we see an emphasis on the sacrificial suffering of Mary—he suggests that in our hour of need we should pray not only to Christ for forgiveness, but also to Mary, who will mercifully come to help us despite our great sinfulness: ‘I ask you through your eternal election, your holy conception, and your vigil at the cross, come to help me at my final end’ (von Paltz 1983–89 3:246). Von Paltz’s prayer reveals the basis for the extensive piety and devotion to Mary: although it is Christ who saves Christians through the cross, it is Mary, the Mother of Mercy and Queen of Heaven, who brings them to Christ.
Not everyone was pleased with the devotion to Mary at this time—neither the quantity nor the quality. The late medieval Modern Devotion, exemplified in the tremendously popular Imitatio Christi by Thomas à Kempis, stressed a highly interior, Christ-focused piety. The saints provided examples for imitation, but they were not the primary focus. Instead, Christ ‘should provide the pattern for self-knowledge, self-mortification, humility, and obedience’ (Heal 2007: 46). Even more explicitly, the great humanist Erasmus called into question many devotional practices, mocking the simple folk who placed too much trust in Mary and veered into superstition and expectations of magical help from her. In his famous colloquy The Shipwreck, Erasmus portrayed certain sailors threatened with a storm who prayed to Mary as a substitute for the goddess Diana, while in The Praise of Folly of 1511 he mocked those who lit candles to honour Mary, but then had no interest in imitating her chastity and modesty (Heal 2007: 50–1). In his Paraphrase on Luke, Erasmus struck a serious blow to the Marian devotion of the late medieval world: he insists that Mary will be called ‘blessed’ by all generations, not because of her own virtue or power, but because the saviour of the world has come through her. It is not she who is the focus, but rather Christ: it is at Jesus’ name that ‘every knee shall bow … for through it alone shall come salvation for the whole world’ (Erasmus 2016: 52–3). It is when Jesus’ name is invoked that ‘diseases shall be dispelled, poisons lose their force, demons flee, and the dead return to life’; we receive these gifts by being like Mary, with a repentant, humble heart, not necessarily by calling upon her (Erasmus 2016: 53). Erasmus did not explicitly reject the invocation of the saints, and even insisted against Zwinglian iconoclasts that Mary could not be ejected from churches without removing her Son also (Heal 2007: 49). But he was forced to defend himself on numerous occasions against charges of denigrating Mary’s honour, and his criticisms found a more receptive audience among other humanists and Protestant reformers than among Catholics.
Far more than Erasmus, Martin Luther’s critiques of the Marian cult had a dramatic effect on devotion to Mary. Later in his life he recalled with disgust his own devotion to Mary and the saints, and the trust he placed in their help and intercession. He had made a promise to ‘fast on bread and water on Saturday for the blessed Virgin’, and called upon St Anne, Mary’s mother, for help during a thunderstorm, making a vow that would send him into the religious life. But these vows were made, he notes, ‘not to God, or to Mary, but to the devil, because it was not commanded’ (Luther 1883–2009 [=WA] 25: 210, 510). He turned to Mary because he feared Christ as an angry judge, and while his own anxious personality may have influenced his prayers, he also had serious theological concerns about the high place of devotion and honour that Mary had been given in the late medieval Church, particularly her position as mediator and intercessor between Christians and Christ.
His earliest critiques of Mary and the saints as intercessors can be found in his lectures on the Psalms from 1513–16, where he suggests that they can detract from faith in Christ’s power and intercession with God. But he continued to encourage his parishioners to take comfort in calling upon Mary for help, as in one 1519 sermon, in which he recommends that at the hour of death, the Christian should ‘invoke all the holy angels and especially his angel and the mother of God’, since God has commanded ‘that the saints should love and assist all who believe’ (WA 2: 696). In his 1521 commentary on the Magnificat, however, Luther insisted that when people call upon Mary, they need to understand that the power belongs to God and not to her: ‘We ought to call upon her, that for her sake God may grant and do what we request’ (Luther 2016: 350). She is no goddess with her own power to aid her devotees, nor does she hold a powerful sway over Christ, needing only to show him the breasts that nursed him in order to achieve her requests. She can best be honoured, as Erasmus had already noted, as a model and guide for imitation. In fact, by the 1537 Smalcald Articles, Luther had determined that devotion to Mary as an intercessor was dangerous and distracting—it is ‘neither commanded nor recommended, [and] has no precedent in the Scripture’—while the excessive devotion shown to Mary through festivals, prayers, churches, images, and altars is sheer idolatry: ‘Such honour belongs to God alone’ (Kolb and Wengert 2000: 305–6).
Likewise, Luther also condemns the notion that he himself shared as a young man—that Mary is the merciful mother who can protect sinners from the strict justice of Christ. Not only does this suggest a greater power than Mary has, but it is a misrepresentation of Christ. Luther blames St Bernard of Clairvaux—for whom he otherwise has great admiration—for misleading people with the notion that Mary simply bares her breasts to Christ, who then cannot refuse her requests, based upon Bernard’s famous vision (WA 21:65, 31; WA 7:568, 29). Luther insists that Christ is just but also merciful, which is particularly represented in his sacrifice on the cross. Mary, as a faithful believer, would be offended by this presentation of her, just as she is offended when people praise her worthiness to become the Mother of God. The notion that Mary’s humility (among other virtues) somehow could merit this great blessing is completely counter to Luther’s basic insistence that salvation comes through faith alone, and human beings can never merit or earn any of the grace that comes from God. Mary’s humility, he insists in his Magnificat commentary, should more accurately be understood (and translated) as lowliness, that is, that she came from a poor family with low social status. She earns nothing, but in fact reveals true humility in her response to this great honour, in remaining simple in heart, lacking all pride, and giving all the glory to God alone. If we want to address Mary properly and avoid the idolatrous danger of using the ‘Hail Mary’ as a prayer, this is what we should say: ‘O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, you were nothing and all despised; yet God in his grace regarded you and worked such great things in you. You were worthy of none of them, but the rich and abundant grace of God was upon you, far above any merit of yours. Hail to you!’ (Luther 2016: 342). Her only ‘worthiness’ was in her suitability as a young virgin, and the fact that she was chosen by God. Even her virginity, long lauded as a ‘virtue’ by theologians and preachers, was not a virtue per se. It was indeed necessary so that Jesus might avoid the contamination of a sinful conception, but it was not a moral quality, and certainly not something that should be turned into a vow, in opposition to God’s command to marry and be fruitful.
Some of the worst excesses of devotion to Mary, Luther believed, could be traced to a mistranslation and misunderstanding of the angel’s salutation to Mary at the Annunciation. The Latin Vulgate translation reads ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena’, or ‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ with ‘full of grace’ implying that Mary was in a sense ‘filled up’ with grace, which she could then in turn bestow upon others, as a queen could dole out treasures from a chest. But a better translation of the Greek, according to Luther, was holdselige or begnadete, ‘gracious one’ or ‘blessed one’, that is, one to whom God is gracious (1532 sermon on the Annunciation, WA 52:626). This critique pointed to another danger, that of turning the Ave Maria into a prayer, when in fact it should only be used as means to give honour to Mary, and to meditate upon God’s grace and blessings. It would be better for the Ave Maria to be ‘entirely laid aside’ than to be used in such an inappropriate and disrespectful manner (WA 11:59–60).
Despite the many issues that Luther perceived in the Catholic devotion to and theology about Mary, he was not at all ready to follow the iconoclastic path of destroying images and cleansing churches of all references to anyone but the Trinity. In response to iconoclastic rioting in Wittenberg in early 1522, Luther returned from his hiding place at the Wartburg and preached a series of sermons that made clear the difference between what was required and what was free. Images, while unnecessary and sometimes problematic, were essentially free. As outward things, they were not important, but destroying them would only plant them in people’s hearts more firmly. But while Luther had a similar approach to the saints—they could be good and faithful role models for Christians, but there were many problematic and superstitious elements to the focus upon them—Mary was in an entirely different category. Once the dangerous elements of her cult were rejected, Christians would be free to honour her as she should be honoured and able to learn from and imitate her as the person closest to Christ.
As an example of faith and trust in God, Mary rivalled Abraham. In accepting the word of the angel at the Annunciation, she revealed the true essence of faith, unlimited by the constraints of what human beings think is possible: ‘That is a high and excellent faith, to become a mother and remain an uncorrupted virgin; that truly surpasses sense, thought, and all human reason and experience’ (WA 17 (2): 399). Mary took God at his word, and did not doubt that what he promised could and would happen, and her faith was just as miraculous, Luther insists, as the incarnation itself (WA 15:478).
Along with representing the highest level of faith, Mary also reveals deep humility. After accepting God’s promise that she would bear his Son, she could easily have become proud, but instead it never occurred to her that she could be worthy of such an honour. She firmly believed in her own lowliness and unworthiness, and recognized that all the blessings she received came from God’s pure grace. Her response is the beautiful hymn of praise, the Magnificat, which Luther notes is sung frequently but rarely understood. Those who treat her as having earned or deserved this honour ‘spoil the Magnificat, make the Mother of God a liar, and diminish the grace of God’ (Luther 2016: 342). Mary remained simple and humble in her heart, insisting that all grace and benefits to her came from God alone. In this she revealed her gelassenheit, her ‘resignation’ or self-surrender to God, as well as her ‘even mind’ or equanimity in giving thanks to God no matter her condition. She was neither disappointed in her lowliness nor moved to pride at her elevation, but was equally satisfied by either condition, only desiring that God’s will be done (Luther 2016: 311). This praise of Mary reveals Luther’s deep indebtedness to medieval mystical theology, for he presents Mary as the ideal mystic, one who lives ‘in pure surrender and obedience to the eternal Good, in love that frees’ (Luther 1980: 71). Even more importantly, her mystical (in this case both spiritual and physical) union with God was not something she sought or achieved, but rather received, so Mary’s example avoids what Luther would consider the problematic aspects of mysticism, particularly when people seek out their own path to God.
As an example of both the greatest faith and the deepest humility, Mary deserves both our honour and our imitation. She also puts her faith into action through love by hurrying out after the angel’s declaration to visit and help her elderly cousin Elizabeth, soon-to-be mother to John. Her faith propels her to loving action—a fine model of Luther’s ethics—and to obedience, both to God’s will and to earthly authorities. Despite the imminent birth of her son, she and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem to register for the census, and even more significantly, they paid the temple tax in Jerusalem (Luke 2:1–7, 22–4). As Mary was still a virgin, she did not technically need any purification ritual, but she chose to follow the law for the sake of others in order to avoid any offence. She put her own freedom aside and acted selflessly and humbly.
Luther also noted that Mary was a particularly good role model for women and girls. Like earlier interpreters, he suggested that her trip to visit Elizabeth was not so much taken in haste as it was taken chastely or modestly. Normally it would not be appropriate for a young woman to rush off by herself through the countryside, but Mary’s demeanour saved her. She did not stop to gossip along the way, but went straight to Elizabeth’s home, inspired both by the Holy Spirit and by a pleasing zeal to serve her elderly relative, help her with the birth, and babysit. Luther particularly stresses Mary as an example of ‘fine and chaste conduct’ for women, in that along with her loving desire to serve, she was also concerned about keeping up appearances, and never being an occasion to sin for others (1544 sermon on the Visitation, WA 52: 682–3).
While there was a great deal of variety and some debate concerning beliefs about Mary in the sixteenth century, Luther generally held to the traditional ideas about her. He was more dismissive of titles given to Mary, particularly those that he thought were misleading and tending towards superstition, such as Queen of Heaven (although in his Magnificat commentary he acknowledged that this was a true title) and Mother of Mercy. However, the title Mother of God, or Theotokos, the God-Bearer, was both true and essential to Christian faith. This title was declared doctrine at the Council of Ephesus in 431 in response both to controversy over Marian devotion and to Christological confusion. Mary’s title of Theotokos (translated into Latin as Mater Dei, and hence Mutter Gottes and Mother of God) represented respect and honour to Mary as well as Christological orthodoxy, in that it emphasized Jesus’ true humanity in the face of those who might doubt the two natures of Christ, hypostatically united into one Person. Luther frequently stressed that Jesus is a true and natural son of Mary, taking his human body from her and not in some other unorthodox manner. But while Christ was truly human, ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ as the creed states, he was also without sin, and thus Luther also accepted Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus, and the ‘virgin birth’ as well, with its traditionally accepted consequences: ‘[Mary] gave birth without sin, without shame, without pain and without injury, as she also conceived without sin’ (WA 17 (2): 304). Jesus was both truly human and truly divine (rejecting the Nestorian view)—there is only one Son, and Mary is the mother of that one Son, thus making her the Theotokos. And while this title preserves a Christological truth, it also has implications for Mary, in that upon this title ‘there follows all honour, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal, namely that she had a child by the Father in heaven. … No one can say anything greater of her or to her …’ (Luther 2016: 347). But she herself, Luther notes, is not interested in gaining attention or glory for herself, but only pointing the way to God and giving him all the glory.
Like the title of Theotokos confirmed for Mary at Ephesus, Luther also accepted the Early Church doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, which was expressed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Mary’s virginity at the time of Christ’s conception and birth was thought important to safeguard him from any taint of sin that would arise from intercourse, and Luther was content to accept the tradition that she remained a virgin throughout her life because ‘scripture does not state or indicate that she later lost her virginity’ (WA 51:176). However, he was accused of teaching the opposite, which prompted him in 1523 to write ‘That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew’. In this text Luther refuted the suggestion that he had questioned Mary’s lifelong virginity, and asserted (with the Early Church father Jerome) that the siblings of Jesus mentioned in the gospels were in fact cousins or other relatives. However, he also insisted that in this matter Mary should not be a role model—she should not be imitated in vowing lifelong virginity or celibacy.
Although Luther accepted the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, his views regarding her sinlessness, and in particular her immaculate (or not) conception, are more complex. The status of Mary’s conception was undetermined in the sixteenth century (Pope Pius IX declared the Immaculate Conception a dogma in 1854), and still a topic for argument. Although theologians agreed that Mary was purified (or, as the Franciscans suggested, preserved) from sin at some point in her life, there was debate over when that occurred. In his last sermon on the holiday of Mary’s Conception, preached in 1520, he complains that the debate about her has caused a great deal of contention, but in reality it is not a matter about which a doctrine can be formed, since ‘there is not a single letter about it in the gospels’ (WA 17 (2): 280). His own position, a common one at the time, was that Mary was conceived normally, but purified from sin at the moment of her ‘second’ conception, that is, at animation when her soul entered her body. This second conception is the more important one, when a person can really be said to live, therefore Luther said that ‘from the first moment that she began to live, she was without all sin’, an honour that was given to no other human being (WA 17 (2): 288).
Although Mary’s Assumption was not declared dogma until 1950, the festival of the Assumption was already widely popular in the late medieval Church. Mary’s assumption of body and soul into heaven was the basis for many of her titles and ostensible powers as Queen of Heaven. It was, more importantly, a firm sign of the promise of bodily resurrection to all believers, but like the Immaculate Conception lacked biblical support. Thus Luther did not preach on this holiday after 1522, suggesting that the idea was misleading to many, although it was important to believe that Mary lives in heaven, like all the faithful. We simply have no way of knowing how that happened, and so it cannot be made into a required belief. In his 1523 ‘Order of Mass and Communion for the church at Wittenberg’, Luther noted that plans in Wittenberg were only to celebrate ‘the Lord’s Days and festivals of the Lord’, not feasts of the saints (WA 12: 208–209). While the Annunciation and Mary’s Purification were included in that list, the non-scriptural festivals of Mary’s Conception, Nativity, and Assumption were not.
One question that follows from a study of Luther’s ideas and writings about Mary is to what extent his views and plans influenced the wider Reformation that occurred within his sphere of influence. Luther was not the only reformer, of course, and many regions even within Germany were influenced by Zwingli, Calvin, or others who took a more radical or strict stance towards cleansing the Church of Marian (and Roman) remnants. However, Luther’s influence was widely felt, and can be seen in sermons, theological texts, polemical writings, and statements of faith, as well as in practical matters such as the survival and transformation of Marian religious art, songs, and liturgies in many communities.
Within Lutheran communities, there was a significant continuity with the medieval Catholic tradition. In terms of theology, Lutheran preachers, like Luther, explicitly maintained their orthodoxy through teaching doctrines such as Mary’s virginity (even her perpetual virginity, in spite of possible scriptural evidence to the contrary and the difficulty of then promoting the married life over a life of vowed celibacy) and maintaining the title of Mother of God. Likewise, in many Lutheran cities and territories pre-Reformation art survived, both in churches and in private collections. This was particularly true in Lutheran areas not faced with the threat of recatholicization or conflict with close Catholic neighbours. Less common but still noticeable, new art with (biblically based) Marian themes was commissioned for Lutheran churches, such as a pulpit produced in 1533 for the Lutheran community in Lübeck’s St Mary’s church, which included a prominent image of the Annunciation (Heal 2007: 83). The feast days of the Annunciation, Visitation, and Purification were largely retained in Lutheran areas, and some church constitutions allowed for celebration of other Marian and saints’ days, such as the Assumption, St John the Baptist, and St Steven.
How is it that these festivals, statues, and paintings could be preserved, created, and celebrated in many Lutheran churches and towns, especially in light of rampant iconoclasm in the early days of the Reformation? According to Bridget Heal, there are two main reasons: the first is that Luther felt that provision should be made for the weak, at least in externals. Rather than destroying every image that could lead Christians to idolatry, or immediately abandoning the Mass and all elements of late medieval piety, Luther knew that the external was less important than the internal—people’s hearts would be changed over time by the working of the Word, and then these external forms and images would take their proper place, and not be an occasion to sin. Externals are adiaphora, things that may or may not help individuals, but not matters vital to salvation. The second reason is that Luther and his followers believed that the meaning or the content of such images, festivals, and even holy objects could be transformed through proper preaching and instruction. Luther had little problem with images and felt that freedom should be allowed in keeping them (or disposing of them), but people should not be forced. Creation of idols happens within the human heart, and that is where the cure should be applied. Luther recognized the potentially positive value of images, arguing that they could serve to teach and inspire better than words alone (Heal 2007: 92–3).
However, in matters essential to faith, Luther and his followers felt that immediate changes must be made. The most significant rejection of medieval Marian piety and doctrine related to the belief that Mary and the saints could serve as intercessors or mediators with God. Luther believed that Christ was the sole mediator, and prayers (along with worship) should be directed only to him. All of Mary’s blessings, including her role in the Incarnation, came to her purely by God’s grace and did not convey any special powers or intercessory role to her. This one change alone had a dramatic impact on devotion towards Mary, and brought Lutheran culture to look very different from Catholic culture. And while Luther himself was still warmly devoted to Mary as an epitome of faith and commitment, later Lutheran preachers had a diminished interest in her. While she could still serve as an important role model and had a significant role to play in the story of salvation, particularly at Christmas, later Lutherans were far more willing to portray Mary in a less flattering light, suggesting that not only could she make mistakes, but even that she could be sinful. For example, in sermons related to the wedding at Cana, Luther and his contemporaries discussed Mary as a model of Christian love and charity, helping the young couple, humbly accepting Christ’s correction, but zealous in prayer and hope for his further help. The story proved to Lutherans that Mary had no authority over Christ in his ministry or divine role, but later Lutherans could even suggest that she overreacted and overreached, and was being punished by her son. In a 1579 sermon collection, Georg Walther notes, ‘Mary was also not totally without sin, for otherwise [Christ] would not have given her such hard words’ (Kreitzer 2004: 137). The powerful Queen of Heaven was, for Lutherans, now the faithful, humble, but fully human and sinful mother of the one who should be the true focus for all Christians, Jesus.