Introduction

The Blessed Virgin Mary was the mother of Jesus Christ, believed by the world’s two billion Christians today (and millions more over the past two millennia) to be the savior and redeemer of humanity. Thus, a high place—preeminent among the saints—has been accorded to Mary in the history of Christianity, especially in Catholic, Orthodox, and High Anglican theology and liturgy, and in the personal devotional lives of the faithful. No other human being, including the prophets, apostles, and saints, has been the subject of even a fraction of the theological reflection that has been devoted to the person of the Virgin:1 “No biblical figure other than Christ is more often portrayed in art than she.”2 In the early church, apologists for Christian asceticism interpreted her as a model of the exalted life of virginity and self-denial. And, for two thousand years, she has been by far the most potent influence on “the definition of the feminine,”3 whether in acceptance or repudiation of the model she provides. “In every century,” Lutheran scholar Jaroslav Pelikan writes, “she served as the model of patience, indeed of quietistic passivity and unquestioning obedience”: Therefore she could be held up to women as a model of how they ought to behave, in submissive obedience to God, to their husbands, and to the clergy and hierarchy of the church.4