[4] Labbé, Conc. iii. 51. Considerable extracts are given by Augusti (Denkw. iii.); see also Milman (Lat. Christ. i. 185), who characterizes much of it as a “wild labyrinth of untranslatable metaphor.”
[5] The term θεοτόκας does not actually occur in the canons of Ephesus. It is found, however, in the creed of Chalcedon.
[6] It is true that Irenaeus (Haer. v. 19, 1) in the passage in which he draws his well-known parallel and contrast between the first and second Eve (cf. Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 100), to the effect that “as the human race fell into bondage to death by a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin,” takes occasion to speak of Mary as the “advocata” of Eve; but it seems certain that this word is a translation of the Greek συνήγορος, and implies hostility and rebuke rather than advocacy.
[7] It is probable that the commemorations and invocations of the Virgin which occur in the present texts of the ancient liturgies of “St James” and “St Mark” are due to interpolation. In this connexion ought also to be noted the chapter in Epiphanius (Haer., 79) against the “Collyridians,” certain women in Thrace, Scythia and Arabia, who were in the habit of worshipping the Virgin (ἀεὶ παρθένον) as a goddess, the offering of a cake (καλλυρίδα τινα) being one of the features of their worship. He rebukes them for offering the worship which was due to the Trinity alone; “let Mary be held in honour, but by no means worshipped.” The cultus was probably a relic of heathenism; cf. Jer. xliv. 19.
[8] “Numquid quia ita deificata, ideo nostrae humanitatis oblita es? Nequaquam, Domina.... Data est tibi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra. Nil tibi impossibile.” Serm. de nativ. Mariae, ap. Gieseler, KG., Bd. ii. Abth. 1.
[9] The points taught in the catechism are—that she is truly the Mother of God, and the second Eve, by whose means we have received blessing and life; that she is the Mother of Pity, and very specially our advocate; that her merits are highly exalted, and that her dispositions towards us are extremely gracious; that her images are of the utmost utility. In the Missal her intercessions (though alluded to in the canon and elsewhere) are seldom directly appealed to except in the Litany and in some of the later offices, such as those for the 8th of September and for the Festival of the Seven Sorrows (decree by Benedict XIII. in 1727). Noteworthy are the versicles in the office for the 8th of December (The Feast of the Immaculate Conception), “Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te,” and “Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, Maria, quia fecit tibi magna qui potens est.”
MARY, known as Mary Magdalene, a woman mentioned in the Gospels, first in Luke viii. 2, as one of a company who “healed of evil spirits and infirmities ... ministered unto them (Jesus and the apostles) of their substance.” It is said that seven demons were cast out of her, but this need not imply simply one occasion. Her name implies that she came from Magdala (el-Mejdel, 3 m. N.W. from Tiberias: in Matt. xv. 39 the right reading is not Magdala by Magadan). She went with Jesus on the last journey to Jerusalem, witnessed the Crucifixion, followed to the burial, and returned to prepare spices. John xx. gives an account of her finding the tomb empty and of her interview with the risen Jesus. Mary of Magdala has been confounded (1) with the unnamed fallen woman who in Simon’s house anointed Christ’s feet (Luke vii. 37); (2) with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus and Martha.
MARY I., queen of England (1516-1558), unpleasantly remembered as “the Bloody Mary” on account of the religious persecutions which prevailed during her reign, was the daughter of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon, born in the earlier years of their married life, when as yet no cloud had darkened the prospect of Henry’s reign. Her birth occurred at Greenwich, on Monday, the 18th February 1516, and she was baptized on the following Wednesday, Cardinal Wolsey standing as her godfather. She seems to have been a singularly precocious child, and is reported in July 1520, when scarcely four and a half years old, as entertaining some visitors by a performance on the virginals. When she was little over nine she was addressed in a complimentary Latin oration by commissioners sent over from Flanders on commercial matters, and replied to them in the same language “with as much assurance and facility as if she had been twelve years old” (Gayangos, iii. pt. 1, 82). Her father was proud of her achievements. About the same time that she replied to the commissioners in Latin he was arranging that she should learn Spanish, Italian and French. A great part, however, of the credit of her early education was undoubtedly due to her mother, who not only consulted the Spanish scholar Vives upon the subject, but was herself Mary’s first teacher in Latin. She was also well instructed in music, and among her principal recreations as she grew up was that of playing on the virginals and lute.