Legends of the Madonna | Page 6

the strong hand and the might that makes the right,--and in every
earnest votary one who, as he knelt, was in this sense pious beyond the
reach of his own thought, and "devout beyond the meaning of his will."
It is curious to observe, as the worship of the Virgin-mother expanded

and gathered to itself the relics of many an ancient faith, how the new
and the old elements, some of them apparently the most heterogeneous,
became amalgamated, and were combined into the early forms of
art;--how the Madonna, when she assumed the characteristics of the
great Diana of Ephesus, at once the type of Fertility, and the Goddess
of Chastity, became, as the impersonation of motherhood, all beauty,
bounty and graciousness; and at the same time, by virtue of her
perpetual virginity, the patroness of single and ascetic life--the example
and the excuse for many of the wildest of the early monkish theories.
With Christianity, new ideas of the moral and religious responsibility
of woman entered the world; and while these ideas were yet struggling
with the Hebrew and classical prejudices concerning the whole sex,
they seem to have produced some curious perplexity in the minds of the
greatest doctors of the faith. Christ, as they assure us, was born of a
woman only, and had no earthly father, that neither sex might despair;
"for had he been born a man (which was necessary), yet not born of
woman, the women might have despaired of themselves, recollecting
the first offence, the first man having been deceived by a woman.
Therefore we are to suppose that, for the exaltation of the male sex,
Christ appeared on earth as a man; and, for the consolation of
womankind, he was born of a woman only; as if it had been said, 'From
henceforth no creature shall be base before God, unless perverted by
depravity.'" (Augustine, Opera Supt. 238, Serm. 63.) Such is the
reasoning of St. Augustine, who, I must observe, had an especial
veneration for his mother Monica; and it is perhaps for her sake that he
seems here desirous to prove that through the Virgin Mary all
womankind were henceforth elevated in the scale of being. And this
was the idea entertained of her subsequently: "Ennobler of thy nature!"
says Dante apostrophizing her, as if her perfections had ennobled not
merely her own sex, but the whole human race.[1]
[Footnote 1: "Tu se' colei che l'umana natura Nobilitasti."]
But also with Christianity came the want of a new type of womanly
perfection, combining all the attributes of the ancient female divinities
with others altogether new. Christ, as the model-man, united the virtues
of the two sexes, till the idea that there are essentially masculine and
feminine virtues intruded itself on the higher Christian conception, and
seems to have necessitated the female type.

The first historical mention of a direct worship paid to the Virgin Mary,
occurs in a passage in the works of St. Epiphanius, who died in 403. In
enumerating the heresies (eighty-four in number) which had sprung up
in the early Church, he mentions a sect of women, who had emigrated
from Thrace into Arabia, with whom it was customary to offer cakes of
meal and honey to the Virgin Mary, as if she had been a divinity,
transferring to her, in fact, the worship paid to Ceres. The very first
instance which occurs in written history of an invocation to Mary, is in
the life of St. Justina, as related by Gregory Nazianzen. Justina calls on
the Virgin-mother to protect her against the seducer and sorcerer,
Cyprian; and does not call in vain. (Sacred and Legendary Art.) These
passages, however, do not prove that previously to the fourth century
there had been no worship or invocation of the Virgin, but rather the
contrary. However this may be, it is to the same period--the fourth
century--we refer the most ancient representations of the Virgin in art.
The earliest figures extant are those on the Christian sarcophagi; but
neither in the early sculpture nor in the mosaics of St. Maria Maggiore
do we find any figure of the Virgin standing alone; she forms part of a
group of the Nativity or the Adoration of the Magi. There is no attempt
at individuality or portraiture. St. Augustine says expressly, that there
existed in his time no authentic portrait of the Virgin; but it is inferred
from his account that, authentic or not, such pictures did then exist,
since there were already disputes concerning their authenticity. There
were at this period received symbols of the person and character of
Christ, as the lamb, the vine, the fish, &c., but not, as far as I can learn,
any such accepted symbols of the Virgin Mary. Further, it is the
opinion of the learned in