The Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Religious Development and Myth-Making

Abstract

It is sometimes both necessary and useful to go backwards in history, to disentangle an earlier development not by the usual method of piecing together the contemporary evidence but by approaching it through the eyes of later generations. This is certainly true of the present subject. We can say with confidence that late antiquity, especially the period from the fifth century onwards, marked the formative stage in the growth of cult and veneration offered to Mary. Yet one of the most striking experiences in any attempt to disentangle this development is the gradual recognition of exactly how much of our understanding has been shaped by later ideas, wishes, and religious agendas. Investigation of this subject entails the attempt to deal with many texts which are in themselves extremely hard to date; and indeed some of the ‘evidence’ itself, at least the written evidence, turns out to consist of a tangle of later legend passing for history - so much so in fact that I am considerably less certain about the subject now than when I originally wrote about it over twenty years ago.