Mary's House. By Donald Carroll. Veritas Books London. 90pp, £9.99 in UK
The Cult of the Virgin: Offerings, Ornaments and Festivals. By Marie-France Boyer. Thames and Hudson. 112pp, £14.95 in UK
In the post-Enlightenment era, when biblical scholars sought a secure Archimedean point from which to stand, Rudolph Bultmann proposed that a distinction be drawn between the Jesus of History and The Christ of Faith. The first referred to the historical positivist attempt to discern the historical truth about Jesus Christ; the second, to the vast historical, theological, devotional, symbolic, and other accretions attaching to his name. Occupying both ends of these polar opposites, Mary's House describes the historical attempts to discover, rescue, and renovate Mary's house at Ephesus. The Cult of the Virgin focuses on her representations: cultic, devotional, symbolic, and artistic.
Some of the early Christian spiritual asylum-seekers, among them Mary and John, took to Ephesus on the Aegean coast of present-day Turkey, and then capital of the Roman province of Asia. A beautiful city, Ephesus was home to the Temple of Artemis (built entirely of marble), one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Christian monotheism promoted by Paul threatened the polytheistic religion of the region but Christianity won out. By 431 AD, the great Council of Ephesus, held in the Church of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus, (the first church in Christendom dedicated to the Virgin Mary) proclaimed her Mother of God.
The house where Mary had lived was venerated by early Christians, but in recent history, its location remained a mystery. In 1812, a German nun and stigmatist, Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich, had visions that culminated in several volumes on the Lives of Jesus and Mary, containing information on the house in Ephesus. Mary's House details the process of finding the site, its historical background, and present status as a major pilgrimage shrine.
In contrast, The Cult of the Virgin is a history, not of facts, or locations, but of representation. The luscious ornamentation, the multi-valency of the images, and the complexity of the projections upon this composite figure, Virgin, bears little relationship to the historical Mary. As the author recognises, the cult of the Virgin gathers together the disparate associations of local divinities, the consistency of the concept of "the Virgin" concealing radical differences in interpretation.
The Virgin, whether of Knock, Lourdes, Guadalupe, Czestochowa, Studzianna, or even Ballinspittle hears the cries of the world, sheds tears of misery and redemption, and expresses (though seldom publicly) her milk of human kindness. The Virgin embodies all that the pious atheists (Julia Kristeva's term), Karl Marx and Ludwig Feuerbach predicted would disappear when we Enlightenment creatures re-appropriated our alienated labour power. Well, it hasn't happened, and if the rise of goddess movements worldwide is anything to go by, the Virgin is about to undergo another profound mutation.
Where does that leave the Mary of history, let alone the Mary of faith? Or to put it another way: where will today's spiritual asylum-seekers find a home? These two books provide a Traveller's Rest along the way, but mapping the journey is another day's work and will take a great deal more sophistication than is presently on offer.
Dr Mary Condren is a theologian. She directs the Institute for Feminism and Religion and teaches in the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Trinity College Dublin
