[536] Tu nos ab hoste protege, et mortis hora suscipe.
[537] Ora pro populo, interveni pro clero intercede pro devoto femineo sexu. See also in the “Ave Maris Stella,”
Salva vincla reis,
Profer lumen cæcis,
Mala nostra pelle,
Bona cuncta posce.
See also the “Regina Cœli,” and the “Ave Regina Cœlorum.”
[538] She has been actually designated the Fourth Person of the Trinity. In Rome there are twenty-seven churches dedicated to Mary for one dedicated to Christ.
“In dangers, in difficulties, in doubts,” says the Roman Breviary “in the abyss of sadness and despair, think of Mary, invoke Mary.”
[539] In the church of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome may be seen a restored mosaic of the adoration of the Magi, in which Mary is represented, with a golden nimbus and tunic, as sitting on a chair of state higher than that of the Divine Child. But in copies of the original mosaic of the fifth century, made two centuries ago, (Ciampini, Vet. Mon., i, p. 200,) Mary is standing, without any nimbus or other sign of honour, by the side of Christ, who, attended by angels, occupies the throne. This was evidently a vindication of the divinity of the Son of Mary against the heresies of the Arians, which has been perverted by modern Romanists to an exaltation of the Virgin to co-equal honours with the Son of God.
The figure of Mary as the Queen of heaven in the church of St. Nicholas at Rome is said by Papebrocius, a Roman authority, to have been originally intended for Our Lord, but afterward altered to the Madonna, a significant illustration of the substitution of her worship for that of her Divine Son.
[540] See the wrathful image of Christ in the Last Judgment of the Campo Santo and the Sistine Chapel.
[541] Wordsworth’s Eccles. Sonnets, xxi.