Recent Developments in the Academic Study of the Cult of the Virgin Mary

Abstract

Marian veneration is a vital dimension in Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, growing in significance from its origins in the early Christian centuries. This development has been particularly important in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the era termed the “Age of Mary.” The four books reviewed in this paper approach the subject of Marian veneration and pilgrimage to Marian shrines from a variety of perspectives. Significant themes covered include the evidence for Marian apparitions, traditional religious pilgrimage, and the changes the Internet has brought to pilgrimage and Marian devotion. Stafford Poole, CM's The Guadalupan Controversies in Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), Robert Maniura's Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century: The Origins of the Cult of Our Lady of Czestochowa (Woodbridge: Boyell Press, 2004), and Paolo Apolito's The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) all treat specific sites of Marian pilgrimage and are reviewed at length. In contrast, Swanson's edited volume, The Church and Mary: Papers Read at the 2001 Summer Meeting and the 2002 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), contains a large number of papers on a range of issues relating to the cult of Mary including music, relics, visions, and the spread of Marian veneration. A selection of these papers is referred to throughout this essay, where relevant.