It goes without saying that Jesus of Nazareth is of primary importance within Christianity. He’s the reputed founder of the faith and, essentially, its raison d’etre. His fourteen apostles (the original dozen; St Matthias who replaced Judas Iscariot; and Saul aka Paul of Tarsus) are also important figures, since their careers got the movement rolling. Of equal significance is Mary, Jesus’ mother. She mattered greatly within the religion, almost from its very start.
It seems almost to go without saying that Mary would be important to Christians, given that she’s the one who reportedly brought Jesus into the world. But there’s an added dimension to her, which came about with the development of the Virgin Birth concept in the late 1st century. She was specifically selected, from among all the women in the world who might have borne him, by God himself.
I’ve already covered the origins of that dogma. But once the Virgin Birth became ingrained in the faith, the “specialness” of Mary was something that couldn’t be ignored. She must have been unusual in some way, and very special in a fundamental manner.
The New Testament provides the foundation for Marian devotion, particularly in passages that highlight her unique role in salvation history. The Annunciation story in Luke presents Mary as the willing servant of God, who accepts her divine calling with faith and humility. The Visitation story later in the same gospel includes the Magnificat, a hymn of praise that underscores Mary's blessedness. At the crucifixion, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus entrusts his mother to the beloved disciple, and even tells him, “Behold your mother,” meaning that he’s to treat Mary as his own mother. By extension, Mary being designated as John’s “mother” applies to the rest of Christendom.
Also by the 2nd century, another way of viewing Mary had emerged, and that was by comparing her to Eve. As sin came into the world through the actions of Eve, salvation came from Mary giving birth to Jesus. She was literally referred to as the “New Eve.” Justin Martyr specifically used this term to describe her, around 150 CE, but this wasn’t likely his own innovation; it predated him.
By the 3rd and 4th centuries, Marian devotion found expression in Christian worship and iconography. The Sub Tuum Praesidium, the oldest known Marian prayer, dates to at least the 3rd century and invokes Mary’s intercession. Liturgical feasts in her honor began to develop, particularly in the Eastern Church. Christian art from this period, including catacomb frescoes, depicted Mary with the Christ-child, underscoring her role in the mystery of the Incarnation.
According to the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of James (also called just the Gospel of James), dating to around 140 to 160 CE or so, Mary’s parents, Anne (aka Anna or Ann) and Joachim were infertile. Anne prayed for a child, and was told by angels that she would have a child after all. She subsequently gave birth to Mary.
Mary’s, then, was the “original” virgin birth, presaging the virgin birth of her own son, Jesus. The implication here — through never actually stated by any of the Church Fathers of the first three centuries of the religion — is that Mary was counted as sinless. In the 4th century, St Ambrose stated she was free from sin, and other figures in the 6th and 7th centuries concurred.
As study of Christology — i.e. the nature of Christ and his relationship with the rest of the Godhead — arose within the religion, inevitably, Mary became involved.
Nowhere was this more evident than in an epithet that applied to her, θεοτοκος (theotokos), which in κοινη (koinē) Greek, meant “God-bearer” or “mother of God.” We know St Athanasius had used this title for her during the early to middle 4th century, and later in the same century it was used by others (for example St Augustine and Basil of Caesarea).
This title became common by the start of the 5th century. By the late 420s CE, it was pervasive enough within Christendom that it ignited a controversy, over the teachings of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Nestorius objected to this title and used χριστοκος (christokos) in its place, believing it better explained Christ’s nature and didn’t compromise Jesus’ divinity.
As I explain in an article on that controversy, this rift was addressed at a council held in the Anatolian city of Ephesus. The choice of this city mattered, because Ephesus was associated with Mary, within Christendom. Legend had it that the apostle John had brought Jesus’ mother Mary to this city, and she presumably lived the rest of her life there.
The earliest extant written mention of this legend was left by Epiphanius of Salamis, sometime in the middle of the 4th century, but it had to have been old by that time, perhaps dating back to the 2nd century. It was also well-established by that time that the Christians of Ephesus and its environs held Mary in special esteem, and were devoted to her in ways not encountered in most other areas.
Most Ephesian Christians believed Nestorius had “dissed” Mary, and opposed him. Their own patriarch, Memnon (also the council’s ostensible host) worked with Nestorius’s other enemies to destroy him, as that council unfolded. The epithet theotokos was affirmed, and that in turn further bolstered reverence for Mary within the Church.
The terms Dormition and Annunciation both refer to the same event and are quite similar. They refer to the story that Mary had not died in a typical sense, and instead, was lifted bodily into Heaven. As such, this isn’t very different from the Ascension of Jesus (as related in Luke and Acts.
The Dormition is an eastern Christian tradition and its focus is on Mary falling asleep in death, but then being physically removed to Heaven. The Assumption is the western Christian view of this same event, with a focus on her removal to Heaven, almost exclusively.
This dual tradition may have emerged as early as the 2nd century. The oldest extant mention of it is in an apocryphal work, the Book of Mary’s Repose (or Liber Requiei Mariae), which likely was first written in the 3rd century even though it’s only known from later copies in Ethiopic and Coptic.
Other works such as Passing of the Blessed Virgin Mary, legendarily written by Joseph of Arimathea, mention it as well, but they’re far later (7th century and after). One curious detail of this version of the story has it that one of the apostles hadn’t witnessed Mary’s assumption, but was later convinced it had happened when Mary-in-Heaven removed her girdle, dropped it, and it fell to the ground.
Note, here we have motifs being applied to Mary that had been applied to Jesus; not only that both ascended physically into Heaven, but also the “doubting Thomas” related in the gospel of John. In the case of Mary, in fact, Christian legend has it that it was the same apostle Thomas who hadn’t seen her assumption and doubted it had occurred. There is a Christian relic — due to this tale — which is called “the Girdle of Thomas.”
Another legend about Mary arose perhaps slightly later, and that’s her perpetual virginity: The belief that she remained a virgin even after giving birth to Jesus and despite the gospels’ mention of several siblings of Jesus. Those brothers and sisters were presumed to have been Joseph’s children by an earlier marriage, with his own marriage to Mary never having been consummated due to his old age.
The oldest texts alluding to this notion are apocryphal, from the 3rd century. Among these are the Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the older and better-known Gospel of Thomas).
Devotion to Mary continued into the Middle Ages and even became something of a cult inside the overall Christian religion. Specific hymns and prayers addressing Mary directly were devised, in addition to the aforementioned Magnificat and Sub Tuum Praesidium. Among them was the Akathist hymn in eastern Christendom, and Ave maris stella and Ave maria (or “Hail Mary”) in the west.
Also, feast days dedicated to Mary were added to the liturgical calendar. Among those were the holy days dedicated to the Annunciation, the Visitation (i.e. Mary’s visit, while she was pregnant, to her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant then with John the Baptist, per the gospel of Luke) and the Presentation (when Mary’s parents brought her to the Temple according to the aforementioned Gospel of James).
Churches were dedicated to, and named for, Mary starting in the 5th century, as far as is known. The oldest such church may have been the Church of the Seat of Mary, built in that century between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. During the Middle Ages, clerical orders were also established which were dedicated to Mary. Among the best-known of these are the Carmelites, so named because they’re thought to have been founded by pilgrims who became hermits on Mt Carmel in the Holy Land late in the 12th century. This order’s formal name makes its Marian nature clear, that being the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. There are also the Servites, formally the Order of Servants of Mary, a mendicant order (i.e. of friars) established in Italy in the 13th century.
This stream of special reverence for Mary, predicated on legends about her, didn’t go unnoticed within Christendom. At various points, Christian thinkers noted flaws in Marianism and reacted against it. During the Reformation, most of the Protestant leaders opposed this “Marian cult” within the Church. They considered prayers directed to Mary as blasphemous, on the grounds that they treated her as an intermediary between humanity and God, whereas that was Jesus’ purview, and only his.
But criticism of Marianism didn’t only start during the Reformation. Earlier Christians commented on it, too. Among them was Epiphanius of Salamis; in the late 4th century he condemned the Kollyridians, a Christian (or quasi-Christian) movement in what is now Arabia. He claimed they worshipped Mary as a deity in her own right, on par with the other persons of the Godhead.
At any rate, within Protestant churches, Marian devotions were toned down or eliminated. For this reason, one sometimes hears modern Protestants speak disparagingly of Roman Catholics as “Mary-worshippers” along with the term “Maryolatry.” However, Marian devotion remains a strong element of both Catholicism and the Orthodox churches.
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