‘Just as God, in the infinite order, is holiness itself and the very exemplar of holiness, so, in accordance with God’s will, the Godbearer, in the finite order, is created holiness itself, and the form and idea [species] of holiness’ (Rossi 2017: 320). These words encapsulate the heart and foundation of the careful arguments built up by the Jesuit theologian, Carlo Passaglia (1812–87), in support of the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, and it is representative of the spirit of nineteenth-century Mariology.
Histories of Marian doctrine and devotion sometimes narrate the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries in terms which suggest that the Catholic Church as an institution moved from being rational and liberal during the age of the Enlightenment, to being reactionary and authoritarian as the Church progressively came under attack from the forces of secular revolution. Within this context, Mary is said to have been a rallying point for religious reaction, as a wave of Marian devotion swept through the Church in defiance of the spread of secular authority (Graef 1985: 77–9; Pope 1985: 181–4; see also the more subtle consideration in de Fiores 2005: 284–305). Some authors argue that the Church’s increasing attachment to an anti-secular supernaturalism was enhanced when, in 1854, Pope Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin (e.g. Wolf 2015: 143–4; for the dogma itself, see Pius IX 1854). The proclamation of the dogma is also presented as a step along the road towards the First Vatican Council (1869–70), which determined that the pope on his own had the authority to rule on points of doctrine, without reference to other Church members (Vatican I 1872: 4.9). This presentation of Mary’s place in nineteenth-century Catholicism is not false, but it is partial and may therefore be misleading.
In 1830, a quarter of a century before the dogmatic definition, Catherine Labouré had received the visions that gave rise to the mass production of the Miraculous Medal, which promoted belief in the Immaculate Conception (Dirvin 1984 [1958]; Laurentin 1983). This event constitutes the beginning of what is sometimes called the ‘Marian Age’ (a term that has both theological and cultural significance), which culminated in 1950 when Pope Pius XII proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption, that is, the teaching that, at the end of Mary’s life, she was ‘assumed, body and soul, into heavenly glory’ (Pius XII 1950).1 One can easily gain the impression that this whole period was one in which theological conservatives ruled the Church under a Marian standard, and that this era was brought to an end with the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), when the Marian standard was lowered. But in truth, Mary’s presence always extended far afield, and was never bound to a single political or theological movement.
Catholicism in the nineteenth century was certainly under attack: intellectually, from Enlightenment rationalism; practically, from secular revolutions; and in devotion, from advocates of the superiority of modern science and technology, who attacked claims of miracles and supernatural apparitions (Blackbourn 1993: 22–41, 256–63; Harris 1999: 320–56). So Catholics were, understandably, defensive, and Mary, as the type of the Church, was at the forefront of Catholic reaction. These were the conditions that made space for an upsurge in Mariological research; but, as we shall see, they were not the intellectual ground of the fine flourishing that the discipline enjoyed during the century’s middle decades. Rather, this flourishing was nurtured by a culture of scholarship that was both patient and open-minded. Although the Marian enthusiasm of the period was sometimes spurred on by a political reaction against social modernization, this does not mean that its theology should be dismissed as a tool of authoritarian ideology. On the contrary, some of the Mariology of the nineteenth century articulates the best insights of the Church’s Marian teaching through the ages.2 Furthermore, the connection between, on the one hand, opposition to secularization, and, on the other, good Mariology is not merely fortuitous. Spiritual people are naturally anxious to preserve an understanding that God acts in the world around them, and they also wish to promote the awareness and practice of human holiness. Secularization threatens those ambitions, and one does not have to be a papal monarchist to wish to defend a spiritual way of life. A renewed focus on Mary as the holiest of God’s creatures was thus an appropriate response amongst devout Catholics who sought to protect themselves and their communities from attempts to annihilate the things they held most dear. The Mariology that they formulated and put into practice was one which attempted to reveal the full holiness to which God’s creation is destined.
The political and intellectual movements of the modern period can be seen in contrasting schools of theology.
Under the influence of the German Enlightenment, and especially of Kant, Georg Hermes (1775–1831) proposed a strongly critical method of theological study. He was one of a number of theologians who adopted the methods of modern philosophy, with a view to Catholic theology being able to enter constructive discussion with other areas of contemporary scholarship (e.g. Johann Baptist von Hirscher (1788–1865); see Bäumer and Scheffzcyk 1991: 214–15). He accepted that divine revelation was the source of the content of theology, but he held that the manner in which truths are understood and represented must be adapted to the scientific method of the time and place in which the theologian is working. In accordance with this principle, Hermes developed a method of ‘positive doubt’ by which to question points of faith (Nichols 2009: 32). Aidan Nichols writes: ‘Hermes appears to have used the term [‘doubt’] in a Fichtean sense according to which lack of a sufficient grounding of some proposition renders impossible a firm decision in its favour’ (Nichols 2009: 33 n.19). This approach led Hermes to acknowledge that Mary should rightly be entitled Mother of God, since this follows from the doctrine of the Incarnation; but he rejected a physical interpretation of the doctrine of the in partu virginity—the teaching that Mary’s childbearing did not entail any loss of her bodily integrity (Bäumer and Scheffzcyk 1991: 154). This teaching dates back at least to the second century, and, amongst other things, points to the divinity of Mary’s child (Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 31–71; Toepel 2014). However, for the method used by Hermes, the doctrine was not sufficiently well supported for the ‘positive doubter’ to be persuaded of its literal truth. He also rejected the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, on the grounds that all human beings share solidarity in Adam’s sin, and that arguments for Mary’s exemption were not strong enough to override this (Michaud 1985: 51–2). By contrast, as this essay will attempt to demonstrate, what was implicit in the defence of Mary’s sinless conception is the notion that what is essential to humanity is not our sin, but our capacity to be brought by God to a state of perfection—the state that is already accomplished in Mary. Hermes’ method did not allow the fact that the Immaculate Conception was widely believed amongst Christians to be counted as a valid argument (Michaud 1985: 52). He worked primarily through the doubting of propositions, and not through interpreting the lived experience of the Church.
In opposition to various approaches based on modern ideas associated with the Enlightenment, neo-scholastic theologians tried to revive the scholasticism of the Middle Ages—or, at least, the new scholasticism that had arisen in the sixteenth century. Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) is often cited as the first systematic Mariologist, and a method of working that was inspired by authors such as Suárez was employed by the neo-scholastics as their model.
Suárez begins by establishing a first principle for an area of enquiry. Thus, in the case of Mariology, he examines the Scriptures and early Church councils in order to establish that Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly human, and that his mother, Mary, is therefore the Godbearer, or Mother of God. He contends that everything else that may be taught about her follows from this dignity and from Mary’s vocation to it (Suárez 1860: 3–12; Suárez 1954). So when Suárez considers the question of her sanctification in her mother’s womb—that is, whether she was conceived without original sin, or only sanctified after conception—the theological argument is driven by Mary’s predestination to be the Mother of God (Suárez 1860: 22–73). Against the claim that Mary must have been subject to the ‘law of Adam’ (i.e. original sin), Suárez argues that Mary was predestined to the divine maternity ‘from before the sin of Adam was foreseen’, and pre-ordained to perpetual sanctity (Suárez 1860: 32–3). Suárez’s arguments take very full account of those of earlier authors, from the Church Fathers onwards, and he also draws on liturgical practice in order to assess the case for and against a particular point. With regard to Mary’s predestination to be the Mother of God, and the bearing that this has on her sinlessness, it is worth giving a short outline of the background against which Suárez was writing: we shall return to the topic later on in this section.
During the centuries of disagreement over the conception of Mary by her mother, St Anne, a number of different arguments were advanced in favour of the Blessed Virgin’s having been conceived without original sin. One that became especially popular is as follows. In the debates over the ‘motive’, or reason, for the Incarnation, the one that tended to be favoured by Franciscans, amongst others (and which is widely held in the Eastern churches as well), is that the Incarnation was not, in the first instance, a response to human sin: it was not ordained primarily for the purpose of saving the world from Adam’s Fall. This was a secondary effect. The primary purpose was the fulfilment of God’s plan for creation—that the world should be brought to glory and perfection through union with him; and God’s uniting himself to the world in Jesus of Nazareth was the means by which this purpose would be accomplished.
So God ordained the Incarnation ‘from before the sin of Adam was foreseen’, that is to say, God intended that the Second Person of the Trinity would become incarnate in the particular man, Jesus of Nazareth, regardless of whether or not humanity sinned. If this was the case, some theologians argued, then the woman from whom the Eternal Word took flesh, that is, Mary, must have been ordained to be the Mother of God in the same act by which the Incarnation itself was predestined. That is to say, it was ordained from all eternity that the Son of God would take flesh from this particular woman. And if Mary was predestined to be the Mother of God ‘from before the sin of Adam was foreseen’, then her designation for that noblest of all creaturely offices must take priority over any subsequent human sinfulness. Mary’s creaturely perfection belongs to her eternally designated status as Godbearer, it cannot therefore be undermined by Adam’s temporal evil. Therefore, the Mother of God must have been conceived without original sin. This is one of the arguments favoured by Suárez.
Now, that argument, as it stands, is taken from disputations conducted in universities. However, the argument was supported by liturgical practice. From at least the eighth century, the lections for the office and Mass of the Blessed Virgin’s Nativity and Conception—as well as for her commemoration on Saturdays—were readings concerning the figure of Holy Wisdom. In Ecclesiasticus 24, Wisdom speaks, saying, ‘From eternity, in the beginning, he created me, and for all the ages I shall not cease to be.’ She goes on to speak about having ministered before the Lord in his Holy Tabernacle. Proverbs 8.22–31 also became standard for these feasts. This is a passage in which, again, Wisdom is speaking. It begins, ‘The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his ways, the first of his acts of old’, and goes on to describe Wisdom’s presence with the Lord from before the foundation of the world. She says, ‘Ages ago, I was conceived … before the hills were brought forth.’
Although the primary referent for Holy Wisdom is Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the use of these readings in Marian liturgies quickly meant that the texts were applied by accommodation to the Blessed Virgin; and by the high Middle Ages, because the Church had authorized the use of these texts in Marian liturgies, it was argued that they could be understood as referring to her directly (Boss 2009).
From eternity, then, the Blessed Virgin was conceived in the mind of God to be the Mother of God, and we read about this eternal conception in the Wisdom lections from Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. Mary’s human conception by her mother, St Anne, was then the earthly instantiation of God’s eternal plan for her. God’s timeless mental conception became a temporal and bodily conception, and was immaculate because of its divine purpose, namely, the holiness of the Mother of God.
It is Mary’s sanctity in both body and soul which also underlies Suárez’s strong interpretation of her in partu virginity, which holds that Mary would have undergone no change of any kind in her bodily organs as a result of her childbearing (Suárez 1860: 83–7).
As Suárez’s discussion progresses, he introduces ‘doubts’, that is, questions which raise problems concerning the points that have been made previously. These doubts are then discussed in turn, examining each for its strengths and weaknesses.
So the neo-scholastic method tries to establish the premisses upon which an argument may be constructed, and then to proceed by logic and questioning to arrive at a correct solution to a question. This is a largely deductive method, being concerned to draw conclusions from first principles, or, conversely, to demonstrate the truth of propositions that were already taught by the Church. Suárez himself is rather eclectic in his use of sources, and makes use of a variety of forms of argument. His later imitators seem to have been less imaginative, and nineteenth-century neo-scholasticism seems to have left rather little of Mariological note.3
For neo-scholastics of the nineteenth century, the supernatural activity of God was something that should always be taken into account, and the Church’s official teachings were accorded an exceptional degree of authority because of the institution’s divine origin and vocation. Thus, for example, Mary’s miraculous virginity in childbirth could be taken as true, since it had a considerable weight of Church approbation through the ages. The task of the theologian would then be to identify the precise content of the doctrine, and show how it followed from more fundamental truths of the faith, such as the Incarnation. Although neo-scholastics accepted the Church’s tough rules for the authentication of miracles and apparitions, their desire to assert the reality of the supernatural, and to oppose the arguments of rationalists, led to their being associated with visions and visionaries. They shared with the romantics an opposition to modern rationalism, an attraction to supernatural phenomena, and a desire to recover aspects of medieval culture.4
The neo-scholastic way of working is described by Valfredo Rossi as ‘static’, in that it seeks to acquire knowledge through philosophical methods that make no reference to historical development, but rather, try to establish a picture that is clear and unchanging (Rossi 2017: 226). In a similarly ‘static’ manner, this theological approach tends to emphasize that divine revelation may be given through Church institutions, or through visionaries whose testimony must be subject to the judgement of Church authorities. The teachings of past theologians and the beliefs of ordinary Christians may also be taken into account in theological argument, but they must be tested by scholastic reasoning and subject to the judgement of the institutional Church. In 1879, neo-scholasticism became the Church’s officially approved model of philosophical enquiry, when Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Aeterni Patris, which gives pride of place amongst Christian thinkers to St Thomas Aquinas, whose work is presented as the strongest intellectual defence against the false arguments of the modern age (Leo XIII 1879).
In the nineteenth century, the use of Wisdom texts in Mariological argument was continued not only by neo-scholastics, but also by the more historical theologians whose Mariology will be briefly described in this section, although they did not always draw on the Scotist Christology outlined above (Rossi 2017: 250). The Bull Ineffabilis Deus, by which Pope Pius IX defined the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception as an article of Catholic faith, begins with the following words:
God Ineffable … having foreseen from all eternity the lamentable wretchedness of the entire human race which would result from the sin of Adam, decreed, by a plan hidden from the centuries, to complete the first work of his goodness by a mystery yet more wondrously sublime through the Incarnation of the Word. … From the very beginning, and before time began, the Eternal Father chose and prepared for His only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom … he would be born … (Pius IX 1854: 61)
The argument here is that the Incarnation and divine motherhood were ordained by God from all eternity, but not ‘before the sin of Adam was foreseen’. Rather, God knew from all eternity that Adam would sin, and the Incarnation—along with the divine motherhood—was ordained as a remedy for this, also in eternity. In itself, this argument appears to undermine the case for Mary’s freedom from original sin, since it makes her divine motherhood dependent upon, and not prior to, humanity’s fall from grace. The argument that the document immediately advances for Mary’s sinless conception is that it was fitting that the mother of the Son of God should ‘triumph utterly over the ancient serpent’ (Pius IX 1854: 61–2).5 However, the systematic argument in the text of Ineffabilis Deus does not do justice to the more literary scholarship that actually formed the background to the pronouncement of the dogma. If Mary was eternally conceived in the mind of God to be the Godbearer in order that the world should be saved from sin, it remains the case that Scriptural texts concerning Holy Wisdom have been accommodated to Mary, and the association with Wisdom points to Mary being all-holy. It was arguments of this textual kind, rather than neo-scholastic ones, which were dominant in the theological work that formed the background to the dogma.
Neo-scholasticism was the theological movement most favoured by the Vatican, but it did not govern Mariology. The important Mariology of the period was undertaken by means of research that proceeded not by abstract deduction from first principles, but rather, by examining the mind of the Church as it is revealed, first, in the historical testimony of teachers and liturgical texts through the ages, and secondly, in the beliefs of the ordinary faithful. It did not focus on doubts, but on the interpretation of the Church’s positive tradition. Their method was an inductive one, and rather than being ‘static’, it was ‘vital’ (Rossi 2017: 226). The principal authors to be taken into account here are Giovanni Perrone (1794–1876), his pupil Carlo Passaglia (1812–87), Passaglia’s pupil Clemens Schrader (1820–75), and John Henry Newman (1801–90). Rather as the neo-scholastics took up the baton of sixteenth-century scholasticism, Perrone and Passaglia found inspiration in the work of the late Renaissance scholar, Dionysius Petavius (Denys Pétau 1583–1632).
Petavius, a Jesuit, was an avid student of the ancient languages and texts that had been becoming available to the scholars of Western Europe since the fifteenth century. He wrote a large work of dogmatic theology, the Dogmata Theologica. On the subject of Mary’s immaculate conception, he remained undecided, but he said he was inclined to accept its truth because it was held by the ‘sensus fidelium’, that is, by the common belief, or feeling, of the Christian people (O’Carroll 1982: 280). Drawing theological argument from Christian practice was a method particularly favoured by Perrone.
At the Jesuit College in Rome, neo-scholasticism was the dominant theological tendency. However, there was a small group there who adopted a more open view of how theology should be pursued, arguing that different schools of thought should be allowed to flourish alongside one another. This group included Perrone, Passaglia, and Schrader, and it has come to be known as the Roman School (Schauf 1938; Kasper 1962). When Pope Pius IX sought advice on whether or not to make a dogmatic definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, he set up a committee which included both Perrone and Passaglia. Perrone himself published a work entitled, De Immaculato Beatae Virginis Conceptu: An Dogmatico decreto definiri possit? (1847), which considered whether the doctrine could indeed be dogmatically defined (Muser 1995: 25). Perrone also assisted in the drafting of the apostolic letter, Ubi Primum (Pius IX 1849). This letter was sent from Pope Pius to all the bishops to seek their view as to whether or not it would be appropriate for the Pope to define the doctrine de fide (as a matter of faith, rather than opinion), and the letter included the following request:
We eagerly desire … that, as soon as possible, you apprise us concerning the devotion which animates your clergy and your people regarding the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin and how ardently glows the desire that this doctrine be defined by the Apostolic See. And especially, Venerable Brethren, we wish to know what you yourselves, in your wise judgment, think and desire on this matter.
(Pius IX 1849: 58)
The opinion of the ordinary clergy and the laity was thus to be taken into account, in accordance with Perrone’s own theological method.
The bishops’ response to the Pope’s letter was overwhelmingly positive, and a number of theological consultants concurred with the bishops on the desirability of defining the dogma. So Perrone was charged with drawing up the first draft of a bull, which was later revised and commented upon by Dom Prosper Guéranger and Passaglia (Laurentin 1958: 309–10). Eventually, on 8 December 1854, the Pope promulgated the Bull Ineffabilis Deus, which states that the Blessed Virgin Mary, ‘in the first instant of her conception, was free from all stain of original sin’ (Pius IX 1854: 80).
Five years later, in May 1859, an article in the liberal Catholic publication, The Rambler, referred to the notion that, ‘[i]n the preparation of a dogmatic definition, the faithful are consulted, as lately in the definition of the Immaculate Conception’ (Newman 1986: 53). This assertion was questioned, and Newman published a defence of it, in his now famous essay, ‘On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine’ (Newman 1986). Newman knew and respected both Perrone and Passaglia. In 1845, he had published An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, and Passaglia had reacted to it unfavourably; indeed, both Perrone and Passaglia disagreed with central points of Newman’s argument, although Perrone seems to have been more sympathetic than Passaglia (Newman 1845, 1962: 36, 42; Thiel 2011: 259; Gregoris 2003: 43). However, all three theologians believed that the truths of the Christian faith are in some way present in the mind of the Church through the ages, and that this is a starting-point for theological enquiry.
Where Perrone focused on the mind of the Church in the sensus fidelium, Passaglia attended to the witness of theologians and liturgists through the ages. After the dogma of the Immaculate Conception had been officially proclaimed, he published a magisterial three-volume study of the subject, De Immaculato Conceptione, a work to which Passaglia’s close friend and colleague, Clemens Schrader, had also made important contributions (Passaglia 1854–5: I.xiv; Muser 1995: 27–9). This work’s theological method is almost entirely historical, and has a certain amount in common with Newman’s understanding of the development of doctrine. For Passaglia, the theologian does not discover anything new, but reveals and articulates a mystery that has always been present, although sometimes unnoticed, in the life of the Church. He proceeds by examining the writings of authors of the Eastern and Western churches from the earliest centuries onwards, with a view to establishing their understanding of Mary’s holiness. He considers devotional writings, hymns, and liturgical texts, as well as doctrinal works. He considers works which speak negatively of Mary’s freedom from any imperfection, and those which speak positively of her great holiness. Mary has commonly been regarded as the holiest of God’s creatures, and in so far as this is the case, it must be implied that she is free from sin of every kind (Anon. 1856).
In all cases, Passaglia takes account of philological scholarship—the specialism of his colleague, Schrader. So, for example, he presents a detailed discussion of the interpretation of Genesis 3:15. In Genesis 3, as Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden, God speaks words of condemnation to the serpent, which, since at least the fourth century, have been interpreted as containing a prophecy of Christ’s conquest over evil. In Genesis 3:15, God says, in the Latin of most Vulgate editions, ‘Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius’: ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and hers. She will crush your head, and you will lie in wait for her heel’. The woman has commonly been understood to be the Blessed Virgin Mary (of whom Eve is a type), and her seed as Jesus Christ. The serpent has brought about humanity’s downfall, but, by the Incarnation, Christ and his mother crush the serpent’s head, which is to say that they overcome the rule of Satan, who is Eden’s serpent. The Vulgate’s feminine pronoun ipsa, giving the translation, ‘she will crush your head’, is not supported by the Hebrew and Greek versions, which give a masculine form: ‘he will crush your head’. When read prophetically, this must refer to Christ, rather than Mary. (Georg Hermes, incidentally, rejected a Marian reading of this verse (Bäumer and Scheffzcyk 1991: 154).) Passaglia, basing his argument on the Hebrew text, argues that the former clause of the prophecy, which speaks of God putting enmity between the serpent and the woman, indicates Mary’s radical separation from evil, and hence, her sinlessness. The latter clause, on the other hand, refers properly to Jesus. However, the grammatically feminine reading dates back to the Church Fathers of the fourth century, and has been authorized by the Western Church. The theologian should therefore take this reading seriously. In the light of this analysis, Passaglia says we may speak of Mary making a contribution to the overthrow of Satan, by giving birth to Jesus. But Mary’s contribution is only a mediate one, since it is not she, but her son, who directly crushes the serpent’s head (Anon. 1856: 158–63).
Newman is well known for his treatment of Mary as the Second Eve in the writings of the Church Fathers. He describes this doctrine as ‘the great rudimental teaching of Antiquity from its earliest date concerning [the Blessed Virgin]’—the fundamental principle of Mariology (Newman 1999: 206). Both Newman and Passaglia argue that Mary’s holiness and immaculate conception follow from this insight (Anon. 1856: 164; O’Carroll 1982: 265). If, as Irenaeus says, Mary stands in relation to Eve as Christ does to Adam—if the Fall occasioned by the disobedience of Eve is reversed by the obedience of Mary—then her holiness must be complete.
To the modern secular reader, the notion of a ‘historical’ approach to a subject is one which means interpreting a text or other action or artefact in accordance with how it might have been understood at the time it was first produced. In theology, by contrast, the purpose of a historical approach is to enquire into truths that have always been present in the mind of the Church, even if they have not always been made explicit. To use the sort of terms that Newman (though not Passaglia) might approve of, we can say the following: When the Fathers of the Eastern Church say that Mary is perfectly accomplished in all holiness, they are not saying in as many words that she is free from original sin, since the doctrine of original sin is a Western doctrine that is not accepted in the East. But for a theologian of the Latin Church, where the doctrine of original sin is the normal teaching, it must follow that the doctrine of Mary’s holiness, as taught by both East and West, means that she was always filled with grace and free of any sin, and hence, that she was immaculately conceived.
Passaglia’s work emphasizes Mary’s exceptional status and unique qualities. But this should not lead to any easy conclusions about Mary being unconnected to the rest of humanity: rather, the reverse is the case. Valfredo Rossi has shown that Passaglia’s Mariology is closely tied to his ecclesiology, and also to his understanding of the state of each Christian person, and that all these are based on an understanding of the work of the Trinity in creation and salvation. The Holy Spirit binds Father and Son together so that the three are one. God the Father sends the Holy Spirit into the Church in order that the Spirit that is in Christ will inhabit the Church as well, and so bind these two into one, as the divinity and humanity of Christ are bound in one Person. And a similar pattern of indwelling by the Spirit binds the Christian to Christ and to the Church. Likewise, Mary’s own perfections are accomplished by God’s sending his Spirit into her to make Christ present within her in a unique manner—that is, to bring about her divine motherhood and all the graces and Christlike qualities that flow from this vocation. So the perfect holiness that is accomplished in Mary, although it is unique, shows how it is that holiness is possible for all creation (Rossi 2017: 71–2, 113–14, and passim).
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception inspired not only theology, but also devotion, during the mid-nineteenth century. In addition to the popularity of the Miraculous Medal, the cult of Mary’s heart became that of her Immaculate Heart, and—above all—in the apparitions at Lourdes, Mary herself used the term ‘Immaculate Conception’ (Zimdars-Swartz 1991: 55; Boss 2004). These apparitions, and the healing spring that is associated with them, rapidly became a phenomenally popular site of pilgrimage for European Catholics (Harris 1999: 210–87). Most readers will be familiar with the story of the apparitions to a fourteen-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, in 1858. The visions occurred at the grotto of Massabielle near the town of Lourdes, in the French Pyrenees. The apparition did not initially identify herself to the visionary, and local people speculated amongst themselves as to who it might be that was appearing to Bernadette. During one of the apparitions, onlookers asked the seer to enquire of the apparition who she was, and the answer that Bernadette received was ‘that she was the Immaculate Conception’ (Laurentin 1987: 225). This is a strange locution—the apparition did not say that she was immaculately conceived, but that she was herself the Immaculate Conception—and it therefore merits theological consideration.
We have seen above that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was tied in the liturgy to readings about Wisdom being present with God from before the foundation of the world. The texts concerning Wisdom were applied to Mary: it was she who was present in the mind of God from before creation, elected from all eternity to the office of the divine motherhood. And this, I suggest, gives us the clue to the meaning of the somewhat obscure words uttered by Bernadette’s vision: ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’ For this does not mean simply, ‘I am the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was conceived without original sin.’ It means something deeper and more mysterious. It means, ‘Like the Wisdom of God, I am the perfect conception formed in the mind of God in eternity.’ The speaker is, indeed, the most immaculate of conceptions, who dwells eternally in God’s own vision for creation. Yet Bernadette’s apparition is simultaneously the flesh-and-blood Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who is in turn the image of Holy Wisdom (Boss 2017: 199–202). This teaching is implicit in the Church’s tradition, and it was entrusted not only to learned theologians, but to the humblest of the ordinary faithful.
The application of Wisdom texts to Mary, and her likeness to deity, is a strong theme in the Mariology of Carlo Passaglia’s pupil, Matthias Scheeben (1835–88). His Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics included a substantial section on Mary that would affect the development of the discipline during the twentieth century (Scheeben 1946; Muser 1995). Scheeben’s first question was, ‘What is the fundamental principle of Mariology?’ We have seen above (pp. 487–8) that Suárez started from the principle that Mary is the Godbearer: it is the doctrine of the divine motherhood that undergirds all other teaching about her. Scheeben, however, argued that the fundamental principle is the bridal motherhood (Gottesbräutliche Mutterschaft): that is to say, when Mary became Mother of God, she simultaneously became God’s bride, and it is this combined principle which undergirds all Marian theology. He writes:
Her exceptional dignity is evident from the fact that the man to whom Mary is related by ties of blood is the God-man. Yet it reveals itself still more clearly when the relationship of Mary to the God-man is so understood that it comes to the fore as a relationship to God in Himself or in His purest, spiritual being. Of course, as such it can no longer be regarded as a blood-relationship, but, with St. Thomas [Aquinas], we can say that, according to the analogy of the second form of human relationship, it is spiritual affinity to God, something like family relationship.
(Scheeben 1946: 160–1)
In fact, the notion of Mary as ‘bride of Christ’ was already well established in Catholic tradition. Mary is a type of the Church, and the Church is the bride of Christ (2 Cor. 11:2). A merging between the figures of the Church and Mary is found commonly in medieval commentaries on the Song of Songs. Here, the lover, or bridegroom, is typically interpreted as Christ, and the beloved, or the bride, as the Church or the Christian soul. But because Mary is a figure for both the Church and the soul, the figure of the bride came to be identified also with Mary. Indeed, texts from the Song of Songs were applied to her directly: the ‘enclosed garden’ (4:12), for example, was universally read as a symbol of her unbroken virginity, and sometimes of her total freedom from sin. Likewise, the verse, ‘Total pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te’ (‘You are all fair, my love, and there is no stain in you’, 4:7), was used as a proof text by those who believed in the Immaculate Conception.
The use of bridal imagery for Mary was widespread in the later Middle Ages, and during the seventeenth century, the great French spiritual writer, Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–57), gave the motif theological importance. He considered that Mary became the bride of God the Father and that, just as a human bride receives an equal share in all the goods that her husband possesses, so Mary was given equal share in the dominion of all creation (Olier 1866: 53–66). She was also made a participant in all the Father’s works, just as she participated in generating the Son in his humanity (Olier 1866: 243–50). This way of thinking is found also in Scheeben.
Scheeben seems to have considered that the doctrine of the divine motherhood on its own did not provide a sufficient ground for the patristic motif of Mary as the Second Eve—a motif which, as we have seen, was theologically fruitful. Although Justin Martyr and Irenaeus had presented Mary as the Second Eve, they had not developed any parallel between, on the one hand, Christ and Adam, and on the other, Mary and Eve. Hilda Graef has written: ‘The parallel Eve–Mary in relation to Adam–Christ was not used by the Fathers, because Adam was Eve’s husband, whereas Mary was the Mother of Christ; moreover, the adjutorium simile sibi [a helpmeet like himself] could not strictly be applied to Mary as it was to Eve, because Mary, being completely human, was not so similar to her divine Son as Eve was to Adam’ (Graef 1985: 118). For Scheeben, however, it was important to understand that Mary was God’s helper, as well as mother, and the notion of the bridal motherhood made this clear. Moreover, Scheeben argues that there is a true sense in which Mary has a divine likeness, and so—at least in some measure—has a likeness to Christ as Eve has a likeness to Adam:
In her transcendental position, by virtue of the grace of the motherhood, Mary appears next to, with, and immediately after Christ in such an eminent way as the image and likeness of God, that the Church does not hesitate to apply to her the scriptural descriptions relative to the eternal Wisdom as the image and likeness of God, which stands apart from all creatures and above them. Accordingly, a participation in the gloria et virtus of the divine persons, a certain communicatio idiomatum divinorum, takes place with Mary, analogously with Christ … (Scheeben 1946: 223)
Scheeben develops in detail the theme of Mary’s relationship to the Blessed Trinity. However, his principal bequest to subsequent generations was probably the raising of the question of Mariology’s fundamental principle. This was discussed extensively in the twentieth century—for example, by Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth (Semmelroth 1964; Rahner 2000)—but has disappeared from theological view since Vatican II.
What, then, of the Marian Age? In 1842, a work was uncovered that had been written by St Louis de Montfort (1673–1716). This work was a Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary (Montfort Missionaries 1995: 1212; de Montfort 1957, 1995). It is a short, practical manual of daily devotion, which aims to cultivate a ‘mariform’ way of life: ‘If Mary, who is the tree of life, is well cultivated in our soul by fidelity to the practices of this devotion, she will in due course bear fruit, and her fruit is none other than Jesus Christ’ (de Montfort 1957: 136). St Louis recommends the practice of imitating Mary’s spiritual virtues, by way of a constant disposition towards prayer and almsgiving, so that Christ will come to live in the practitioner as he once came to dwell in Mary. St Louis also recommends consecrating oneself as a slave to both Christ and Mary, and offering to her all one’s merits and concerns, in order to attain union with her son. She is closest to Christ, and the person most able to appeal to him (de Montfort 1995). The True Devotion was immediately popular, and, during the century following its first publication, it became—directly or indirectly—a staple component of Catholic devotion.
One idea contained in The True Devotion is that of the Age of Mary. This is founded on the idea that, just as Christ first came upon earth through Mary, so she will again precede him before his Second Coming. The Age of Mary will be a time when Mary is present in many souls, so that, in those souls, the Holy Spirit will find his spouse and will enter into them. St Louis writes: ‘That day will dawn only when the devotion I teach is understood and put into practice. Ut adveniat regnum tuum, adveniat regnum Mariae: “Lord, that your kingdom may come, may the reign of Mary come!” ’ (de Montfort 1995: 360). To many Catholics, it seemed that the Marian Age was in full flower from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Following the Second Vatican Council, the Marian Age seems to have waned, and has not obviously been succeeded by the Kingdom of God. Yet this does not necessarily indicate that St Louis was incorrect in his prediction—only, perhaps, that we are not very good at reading the signs of the times. But even if the mid-nineteenth century was not the beginning of an eschatological Age of Mary, it is certain that it was a lively period for Mariology. And whatever direction Mariology takes in the future, it will have to take account of its nineteenth-century inheritance.