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| Raphael, The Sistine Madonna Italian, c, 1513-1514 Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister |
On January 1 each year, the Church celebrates the feast of Mary, Mother of God. To some contemporary Christian groups and to some others the use of the term “Mother of God” feels uncomfortable, perhaps even blasphemous, for how could a mortal woman be the mother of God?
However, in reality, the shoe is (as it were) on the other foot. Denial of this term is the actual blasphemy, the actual heresy. How is this so? Because it was so declared by the Council of Ephesus in 431, the third Ecumenical Council and one of the seven held to be definitive by Orthodox, Roman Catholic and most Protestant communities.
The title “Mother of God” was one result of the long and
intense debate that occupied Christians for the first several centuries after
Christ. These debates centered on how to
understand the identity of Jesus and His relation to the Godhead.
Already in the earliest Christian
writings, the epistles of St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, there was an
understanding of God as a Trinity of three persons, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, in one Godhead. However, it took a lot of thought and argument to work out how
the Second Person, the Son, was related to the human being who was Jesus. Was the man Jesus simply some kind of mask
for the Second Person of the Trinity, the Divine Logos? Was Jesus possessed of two different natures
(human and divine) each acting independently from the other? Was He a single Person with two natures
combined? It took most of the first 500
years of the Christian church to resolve these issues to the agreement of most
parties.
The eventual decision was that He combined the two natures
in one person and was both human and Divine, without division. This is called the “hypostatic union”. Ephesus was one of the councils in which this
understanding was worked out.
Therefore, it followed logically that if Jesus was both
human and Divine in equal and undivided measure, then Mary His mother was not
just the mother of the human being named Jesus, but also the mother of Jesus in
His incarnate divinity and, therefore, entitled to be called “Mother of
God”. This is understood always to mean
that she is the mother of Jesus, who was both man and God, and not that she was
the mother of the Godhead, which has no beginning and no end and, therefore,
cannot have a human mother. As St.
Cyril of Alexandria put it at Ephesus “since the holy Virgin brought forth
corporally God made one with flesh according to nature, for this reason we also
call her Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word had the beginning of
its existence from the flesh.” 1
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| Bartolomeo Vivarini, Madonna and Child Italian, c. 1465-1470 Venice, Museo Correr |
In art the theme of Mary as Mother of God has many
manifestations, each exploring a particular way in which she relates to Jesus
and to us. For Catholics, one of the
most familiar pictures of Mary with Jesus, her Child, is a picture known as Our
Lady of Perpetual Help. What the
majority of Catholics are not aware of is that this image is actually Greek,
probably painted on the island of Crete in the 14th century and
brought to Rome in the 15th.
Since 1499 this image has been venerated in a Church on Via Merulana in
Rome. For many centuries it resided in
the Church of San Matteo, but that church was demolished by troops of the
French Republic when they invaded Rome in 1798.
The picture was rescued and venerated in a nearby church until, in 1865,
it was placed in a new church, which was built over the ruins of San Matteo and
dedicated to Saint Alphonsus Ligouri.
Since 1865 it has been housed in the church of Saint Alphonsus Ligouri
on Via
Merulana. 2
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Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cretan, 14th-15th Centry Rome, Church of Sant'Alfonso Liguori |
This image is one of a group of images which are known as
the Theotokos Hodegetria. These Greek
words mean respectively “God-bearer” or “She who bears God” and “She who shows
the way”. In these images, Mary, the
Theotokos, the Mother of God, holds the Infant Jesus and, with her free hand
gestures toward Him, she literally shows us the Way. Typically, Mary looks out of the picture at us, as she gestures toward Jesus. She is calling us to contemplation of the mystery of God made flesh through her. This is one of the oldest types of Byzantine
icons dedicated to Mary and one of the most prevalent.
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|
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| Virgin Hodegetria Byzantine ivory, Mid-10-Mid-11th Centuries New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Virgin Hodegetria Byzantine, c. 1175-1200 Kastoria (Greece), Byzantine Museum |
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| Madonna and Child Enthroned Byzantine, c. 1250-1275 Washington, National Gallery of Art |
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| Dionysius, Hodegetria (Called the Guide of Wayfarers) Greek, 1482 Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery |
The Hodegetria image also lies at the base of many
well-known images of the Western (or Latin) Church. The early Renaissance artists, especially in
Italy, derived their iconography from Byzantine icons, which they modified over
time until many of the recognizably Byzantine elements disappeared and softer, less formal poses in more realistic settings became the norm. Yet the positions of Mary and Jesus and Mary’s
gesture towards her Son largely remained unchanged.
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| Mosaic, Madonna and Child Italian, 13th Century Rome, Church of San Paolo fuori le Mura |
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| Berlinghiero, Madonna and Child Italian, c. 1230 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Cimabue, Madonna and Child in Majesty Italian, c. 1285-1286 Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi |
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| Duccio, Rucellai Madonna Italian, 1285 Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi |
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| Duccio, Madonna and Child Italian, c. 1304-1308 Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria |
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| Simone Martini, Madonna and Child Italian, c.1308-1310 Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale |
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| Simone Martini, Maesta Italian, 1315 Siena, Palazzo Publico |
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| Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and Child with St. Francis and St. John the Baptist Italian, c.1320 Assisi, Basilica of San Francesco, Lower Church |
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| Simone Martini, Madonna and Child Italian, c.1326 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art Robert Lehman Collection |
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| Lippo Memmi, Madonna and Child with a Donor Italian, c.1335 Washington, National Gallery of Art |
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| Masaccio, Madonna and Child Italian, 1426 London, National Gallery |
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| Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child Italian, c.1440 Washington, National Gallery of Art |
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| Jacopo Bellini, Madonna and Child Italian, 1450 Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi |
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| Benozzo Gozzoli, Madonna and Child Italian, c.1460 Detroit, Institute of Arts |
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| Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child Italian, c.1470 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection |
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| Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, Madonna and Child Italian, c.1470 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Benvenuto di Giovanni, Madonna and Child with St. Jerome and St. Bernardino Italian, c.1480-1485 Washington, National Gallery of Art |
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| Carlo Crivelli, Madonna and Child Italian, c.1480 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child Italian, 1485-1490 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Albrecht Durer, Madonna and Child German, c.1496-1499 Washington, National Gallery of Art |
On the feast of the Mother of God we recognize how much we
owe to Our Lady and to our forefathers in the faith.
© M. Duffy, 2017
___________________________________________________________
- Translated by Henry Percival. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 14. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1900.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3810.htm
- Information on the history of the image of Our Lady of
Perpetual Help from the Redemptorist Fathers, now its guardians. http://www.cssr.com/english/whoarewe/iconstory.shtml
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