Piety, Penance, and Popular Reading in Devotion to the Virgin Mary and Her Miracles

‘Those folk are all men [and women] of my kidney who delight in miracles and fictitious marvels, whether hearing or telling about them’, exclaimed Erasmus’s Folly. As for saints, Each one of these is assigned his [or her] special powers ... so that one gives relief from toothache, another stands by women in childbirth.... There are some whose influence extends to several things, notably the Virgin, mother of God, for the common ignorant man comes near to attributing more to her than to her son . Reformers saw such cults as detracting from the centrality of Christ in Christian devotion. One of the reforming factors of anticlericalism in the early sixteenth century was the search for a more direct route to salvation, a more direct line to God than through the mediating authority of the perhaps all too earth-bound priest. Increasingly often in pre-Reformation Europe the mediating influence of Mary or of a favourite saint was felt to be more effective than that of the priest. Both lay and religious found Mary, the mother of God, more accessible than a judgemental Christ. Despite the teaching of the Church, Mary did appear to come between Christ and his people, as often illustrated by the iconography of the Madonna of Mercy upon whose mantle the arrows rained down by Christ or God the Father were broken

Art · Art history · Erasmus · Favourite · Iconography · Literature · Piety · SAINT · The Renaissance · Theology · Early Modern Women Writers · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

• Latin Lay Piety and Vernacular Lay Piety in Word and Image

  Open Access•Ruth Chavasse•Renaissance Studies•1996

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