The ancient Chaldees believed in a celestial virgin-mother to whom the erring sinner might appeal, and Shin-moo, the mother goddess, occupies a conspicuous place in Chinese worship. The Babylonians and Assyrians worshiped a goddess called Mylitta, whose son Tammuz is said to have arisen from the dead.
In India they have worshiped for ages Devaki, the mother of Krishna, and Maya, the mother of Buddha, both of whom are represented with the infant saviors in their arms. Their statues, similar to the Christian madonnas, are found in Hindu temples, and their portraits are always accompanied by halos.
Sochiquetzal, mother of Quetzalcoatl, was worshiped in Mexico as the mother of their crucified savior. As queen of heaven and the chaste and immaculate protectress of women, the Greek Hera and her Roman prototype, Juno, were worshiped by the ancient classical world, while the virtuous Diana of Ephesus held a similar place in Phœnician mythology.
All the ancient beliefs in the virgin queen of heaven and her miraculous child probably had more or less effect on the growth of virgin worship in the Christian church; but it was undoubtedly Egyptian influence which was most powerful in the adoption of it, just as it was in regard to the trinitarian dogma. The worship of Isis and Horus was introduced into Rome during the early days of the empire and was readily accepted. And with its introduction came those basalt images of the goddess and her child which have since been adopted by the Christians as ancient representations of Mary and Jesus, albeit they are as black as Ethiopians. Many centuries before, the worship of the Greek goddess Hera had been instituted at Rome under the name of Juno, and she was especially regarded as the chaste and immaculate protectress of women. And it was the combination of the worship offered to these two deities that the Christian church condensed into the worship of the mother of Jesus, to which it added the attributes of Diana, making Mary the patroness of chastity as well as fruitfulness! In Dante’s day it was customary to invoke the Virgin Mary at childbirth just as Juno Lucina was invoked by the pagan ancestors of the Italians.
The worship of the virgin as theotokos, the mother of god, was promulgated at the general council of Ephesus, which was called by the Emperor Theodosius II in 431, and, after that date, and up to the present time, we find this lowly Jewish peasant girl delineated in all the insignia of royalty and portrayed in the most beautiful and patrician type of classical beauty.
With the adoration of Mary rose the legend that she, too, had ascended bodily into heaven and was there crowned by her son and bidden to sit eternally upon his right hand that she might plead with him to mitigate the punishments of sinners, thus allowing that the judgment of this second member of the holy trinity might be fallible, or at least open to influence.
Having raised the virgin to this immense height, the natural sequence was to go a step farther and grant to her also immaculate origin. This idea was first noticed in the eleventh century and steadily grew until in 1494 Sextus the Fourth officially recognized it and gave it the solemn sanction of the church, and in July, 1615, Paul the Fifth instituted the office commemorating her immaculate conception. Virgin worship has continued to grow and flourish, and even so late as 1854, Pius the Ninth issued a bull officially declaring Mary the “Mediatrix” between Christ and the faithful.
Mary is not, however, the only intercessor that stands between man and his God. There is an immense horde of saints who also occupy positions of honor about the heavenly throne. These immortal semi-human beings are created by a decree of the Roman pontiff and their canonization has often been due to whimsical reasoning. That all the apostles, martyrs, and early Christian fathers should have been raised to this holy peerage is not so remarkable; but that such honor should have been conferred on the wicked, unscrupulous, and vicious Constantine, and his almost unknown mother Helena; on the powerful and warlike Charlemagne; and on the ambitious and ungrateful Thomas à Becket, seems strange to say the least.