I will confess that during this quarter I have struggled to engage with the material, the mythology, at face value. In the deconstructive process of my youth I believe I so thoroughly removed myself from Christianity than any sense of shock or awe from the theology itself has become very difficult to achieve -- I have spent these past few weeks attempting to transpose much of the Christian mythological components into other types of mythology, mythology not burdened by a supposition of truth in the present -- to replicate what I imagine feeling the "stakes" of Christianity would be like. This all changed with the understanding of Mary.
Mary has always seemed to me a random, weak link in Christian theology. If God -- or, as we have now more specifically discussed, the Son -- was the Creator, why could he not appear on Earth by his own doing, without involving a human in the matter? I think attempts to humanize Mary, Jesus, and other biblical figures have in this regard been counterintuitive. They undermine the (for lack of a better word) world-building elements that make this mythology so compelling.
The idea of Mary as the New Ark, makes perfect sense and so neatly explains the rest of the mythology - the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion. And yet most of all, it feels larger-than-life. It feels much more similar to ancient mythologies or those described in fantasy novels, and particularly, more like a continuation of the Old Testament than if these greater implications were not present. To me, the symbolic abstraction of Mary as the Ark, and Jesus as the literal incarnation of the Word from the Tablets is far more believable as the basis for a religion precisely because it is so unreal.
As a student of Art History, I have spent much time looking at medieval art, Christian art, and just as the Middle Ages have been framed to me by professors as a "period of time attempting to recover all that was lost with the fall of Rome" leading into the Renaissance, art has always appeared to follow the same course. I find it very amusing when my friends come with me to museums and laugh at the un-human looking figures in medieval paintings. Their laughs are often accompanied by self-deprecating remarks or commentary on the artist's skill and the primitivity of the Middle Ages. The instinct is understandable, but what they do not know is that this was (for the most part) deliberate. Late antique and early Christian art specifically sought to abstract their figural representations to emphasize how unlike the average man the saints and biblical figures were. They were a material testament to their reality, but a safeguard against excessive familiarity.
I see the popular distinction between the New Testament and Old Testament (particularly in the idea that their Gods are distinctively different) not unlike the "rift" between medieval and Renaissance art; the idea that one is more natural and good while the other is crude and harsh and untamed. I am by no means an expert on New and Old Testament theology or their intersections, but they have always seemed distinct from each other to me. Mary helps bridge this gap.
The way Mary is popularly described, at least in modern Christianity, seems very naive and passive. I was struck in reading St Anselm's Prayers to St Mary by the more serious undertones that lend a different dimension to the effusive praise bestowed on her.
While he does praise Mary to a degree that numbs its own effect, all of this praise is qualified, in a way that grants Mary authority and qualities beyond her virtues. Anselm refers to her as "holy Mary," "most gentle [...] kind [...] dear Lady" (I.80-85), the "most blessed of all Marys" (III.2), and marvels at her "unparalleled virginity" (III.99) in a way that seems not dissimilar to modern representations of Mary. Yet he also begs her: "surely you will not forget in hatred of me / what you so mercifully brought into the world, / so happily revealed and lovingly embraced? [...] how can the mother of God not care / when the lost cry to her?" (III.40-46). It feels odd to suggest that in the midst of a beautifully written, meditative prayer there are elements of resentment and accusation, but thus was my initial impression, only compounded by Anselm's representation of the relationship, to an ordinary Christian, between God and Mary:
So the accused flees from the just God / to the good mother of the merciful God.
The accused finds refuge from the mother he has offended
in the good son of the kind mother" (III.78-86).
Mary is not just an intercessor, but an agent capable of anger, enmity, and offense, very similar to God. The explanation for this is only possible through her incarnation as the Ark -- not just as a servant of God but as an agent and a protector as well. The fear (although perhaps that is too strong a word) of her is not due to her actions and personality, but due to the conditions of her existence; she retains a larger-than-life quality that inspires belief and all that comes with it.
Mary's humanization speaks, to me, of a form of demythologizing. In making her too human-like (although still idealized), whether in art or in her reduction to a perfect woman and servant of God, she loses her power, and Christianity loses its mystery.
- clmr
I appreciate your struggles with finding the mystery in the mythology—this is precisely what makes studying the medieval tradition, for me, so exciting! Everything that we've been told in modernity about the tradition is misleading (in my experience). You put your finger on the problem nicely with your reference to the framing by antiquity and the Renaissance, although the real break comes somewhat later, with the Enlightenment. What happens when you look at Renaissance art now, knowing what you do about the immediate tradition in which they are working? Can you see how the Renaissance is not such a great break as later Enlightenment historians tried to argue? Mary is there in their paintings much as she is in the ancient and medieval—we (modern viewers) are often spoofed by the "realism" of the Renaissance images, when in fact they were painted as icons—to show the very kind of mysteries the medieval mosaics and books were illustrating. I would have enjoyed seeing some examples of the images you are thinking of—that would help make both the contrasts and the continuities clearer.
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