This book offers new insight and understanding of the cult of Mary from its earliest incarnations in Christianity.

Tracing devotion to Mary to psychological and historical processes that began in the fifth century, Michael Carroll answers intriguing questions: What explains the many reports of Marian apparitions over the centuries? Why is Mary both "Virgin" and "Mother" simultaneously? Why has the Marian cult always been stronger in certain geographical areas than in others? The first half of the book presents a psychoanalytic explanation for the most salient facts about the Marian cult and the second addresses the question of Marian apparitions.

A sweeping, ambitious study of the Virgin Mary’s emergence and role throughout Western historyHow did the Virgin Mary, about whom very little is said in the Gospels, become one of the most powerful and complex religious figures in the world? To arrive at the answers to this far-reaching question, one of our foremost medieval historians, Miri Rubin, investigates the ideas, practices, and images that have developed around the figure of Mary from the earliest decades of Christianity to around the year 1600. Drawing on an extraordinarily wide range of sources—including music, poetry, theology, art, scripture, and miracle tales—Rubin reveals how Mary became so embedded in our culture that it is impossible to conceive of Western history without her.In her rise to global prominence, Mary was continually remade and reimagined by wave after wave of devotees. Rubin shows how early Christians endowed Mary with a fine ancestry; why in early medieval Europe her roles as mother, bride, and companion came to the fore; and how the focus later shifted to her humanity and unparalleled purity. She also explores how indigenous people in Central America, Africa, and Asia remade Mary and so fit her into their own cultures.Beautifully written and finely illustrated, this book is a triumph of sympathy and intelligence. It demonstrates Mary’s endless capacity to inspire and her profound presence in Christian cultures and beyond.

This volume, on the cult of the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) in Byzantium, focuses on textual and historical aspects of the subject, thus complementing previous work which has centered more on the cult of images of the Mother of God. This international cast of scholars, consider the development and transformation of the cult from approximately the fourth through the twelfth centuries. The aim of this volume is to build on recent work on the cult of the Virgin Mary in Byzantium and to explore new areas of study. The rationale is critical and historical, using literary, artistic, and archaeological sources to evaluate her role in the development of the Byzantine understanding of the ways in which God interacts with creation by means of icons, relics and the Theotokos.

Worshiped throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, the "Mother of the Gods" was known by a variety of names. Among peoples of Asia Minor, where her cult first began, she often shared the names of local mountains. The Greeks commonly called her Cybele, the name given to her by the Phrygians of Asia Minor, and identified her with their own mother goddesses Rhea, Gaia, and Demeter. The Romans adopted her worship at the end of the Second Punic War and called her Mater Magna, Great Mother. Her cult became one of the three most important mystery cults in the Roman Empire, along with those of Mithras and Isis. And as Christianity took hold in the Roman world, ritual elements of her cult were incorporated into the burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary. In Mother of the Gods, Philippe Borgeaud traces the journey of this divine figure through Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome between the sixth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. He examines how the Mother of the Gods was integrated into specific cultures, what she represented to those who worshiped her, and how she was used as a symbol in art, myth, and even politics. The Mother of the Gods was often seen as a dualistic figure: ancestral and foreign, aristocratic and disreputable, nurturing and dangerous. Borgeaud's challenging and nuanced portrait opens new windows on the ancient world's sophisticated religious beliefs and shifting cultural identities.

For the first time a noted historian of Christianity explores the full story of the emergence and development of the Marian cult in the early Christian centuries. The means by which Mary, mother of Jesus, came to prominence have long remained strangely overlooked despite, or perhaps because of, her centrality in Christian devotion. Gathering together fresh information from often neglected sources, including early liturgical texts and Dormition and Assumption apocrypha, Stephen Shoemaker reveals that Marian devotion played a far more vital role in the development of early Christian belief and practice than has been previously recognized, finding evidence that dates back to the latter half of the second century. Through extensive research, the author is able to provide a fascinating background to the hitherto inexplicable “explosion” of Marian devotion that historians and theologians have pondered for decades, offering a wide-ranging study that challenges many conventional beliefs surrounding the subject of Mary, Mother of God.

Shows how the figure of Mary has shaped and been shaped by changing social and historical circumstances and why for all their beauty and power,the legends of Mary have condemned real women to perpetual inferiority.

The Virgin Mary is a dazzling icon, frequently escaping from the Church's strict constraints. She is a symbol of faith and hope, as well as one of beauty and celebration. This book explores the many faces of the Virgin Mary around the world and the rites and ceremonies associated with her.

This is an open access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The ancient Dormition and Assumption traditions are a collection of over sixty different narratives, preserved in nine ancient languages, that commemorate the end of the Virgin Mary's life. These traditions have long been overlooked by scholars of early Christianity, no doubt largely because this complicated corpus was insufficiently well known. The present study aims to remedy this situation with a detailed analysis of the earliest traditions of Mary's death, including liturgical and archaeological evidence as well as the numerous narrative sources. Several of the most important narratives are translated in appendices, many appearing in English for the first time. The book will be of interest to all scholars of early Christian literature.