Mary

“Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of all graces, Queen of Heaven, Immaculate Conception”

“The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture”

“Our Lady of Aparecida”

“Holy Spirit God”

“Boss echoes Steinberg's observation that "the modern aversion from Mary's physical motherhood" is accompanied by "a certain embaressment of such commentators in the face of descriptions of pregnancy and parturition." In her reading of the Gospel of Matthew, Jane Scharberg comments on a reviewer's indignation that she should discuss intimate details of Mary's pregnancy as a topic inappropriate for "polite company."”

“As Frank Graziano comments, in the 1980s Steinberg's views provoked much polemical scholarship concerning the relationship between theology and eroticism. Carolyn Walker Bynum argued indignantly that medieval viewers of Christ's flesh did not understand the art as sexual: they did not see the representation of Christ's penis in sexual terms, and they viewed the Virgin's breasts "primarily" as food.”

“In her discussion of the art of the High Middle Ages, Madeline Caviness comments on the hidden "gynecological power" underneath the "heavily draped idealized figure" of the Virgin. I use the similar term gynotheology to refer to a high degree of concern, sometimes seemeingly obsessive within medieval (and later) Mariology, with the gynecological, the female sexual and reproductive apparatus and functions. It is an emphasis shared, paradoxically, by both late medieval Mariology and its Reformation opponents.”

“Quite apart from the question of the truth of the diverging traditions of Christianity, the Protestant view of Mary, argues Beattie, "easily lends itself to the denigration of the female body," not only "its sexual and maternal functions," but also as the basis for both individual and relational being. That dual claim that the reformers were, in effect, empirically correct about the medieval sexualization of Christianity but at some deeper level mistaken about human sexuality - will be a major suggestion of this study.”

“Why, asked Luther, was Mary venerated when her role was at best an example of obedience and essentially that of providing Jesus with a womb for nine months? Or, as it was put more disparagingly by Latimer and others, when she was but a pudding sack or a "bag of saffron...when the spice was out," a slur that was sufficiently au courant in 1536 to be specifically named and banned as heretical.”

“Richard Marks points to the "massive expansion" of representations of the Virgin in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century parish churches. But Madonnas, he points out, "not only multiplied," they also "diversified." Sir Thomas More pointed out to reformers such as Dyndale that the various ladies - such as those of Walingham, Ipswich, and, nearer to his home in Chelsea at Willesden, to which he made a pilgrimage just before he was imprisoned - were "but the images of our Lady herself."”

“In his biblical commentaries, Latimer attacks Mary for what he sees as pride, bad manners, arrogance, and - in an extraordinarily revealing remark given the history of Christianity and its emphasis on motherhood - for reprimanding Jesus "like a mother." As MacCulloch comments,the very phrase forms "a clue to Latimer's unconscious feelings," especially his need to neutralize or destroy specifically female or motherly power.”

“Here is confounded and overthrown the foolish opinion of the papists, which would have us to worship a creature before the Creator; Mary before her Son. These wise men do not so; they worship not Mary and wherefore? Because God only is to be worshipped: but Mary is not God.”

“And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,”

“The rose is Mary, hevene qwen,  Out of here bosum the blosme sprong.”

“The aungil came fro hevene tourTo grete Marye with gret honour,And seyde sche xuld bere the flour  That xulde breke the fyndes bond.”

“Nou goth sonne under wode;Me reweth, Marye, thy faire rŏde.Nou goth sonne under tre;Me reweth, Marye, thy sone and the.”

“It was fitting that such a holy Son should have a holy Mother.”

“Christ ... was born of a most undefiled Virgin.”

“I esteem immensely the Mother of God, the ever chaste, immaculate Virgin Mary.”

“The more the honor and love of Christ increases among men, so much the esteem and honor given to Mary should grow.”