Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (review)

Professor Pelikan adapts the successful format which he developed for Jesus through the Centuries: . . . over a decade ago to explore various presentations of Mary and her role as expressed not only in popular piety and theological development but also in other cultural expressions particularly literature, painting, and, to some extent, music. He has designed 16 chapters, each with a distinctive title, painting, and theme all organized somewhat chronologically. In his introduction, Pelikan explains the timeliness of this study, citing diverse contemporary issues such as feminist scholarship, Marian apparitions and ecumenism. He devotes chapter 12 to Goethe’s treatment of “the Eternal Feminine” in his Faust; and chapter 13 to the popularity of Marian apparitions since 1830. Pelikan’s interest in ecumenism not only informs his treatment of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant views but motivates this whole collection. Moreover, he broadens ecumenism to look at Christian relations with Judaism particularly in the first two chapters and then in chapter 5 to include an extended treatment of the treatment of Mary in the Qur’an.

Throughout Pelikan describes various presentations of Mary lucidly, perceptively, and, occasionally, provocatively. Although several of the chapters were written for other contexts, most chapters do reflect a common method. Both the professional scholar and the informed university student will recognize Pelikan’s reliance on documented primary texts. He usually refers the reader to one pertinent scholarly treatment of the issue at stake. After two chapters dealing with the relative lack of detailed information in the New Testament, Pelikan goes on to describe the appropriation of themes and allusions in the Hebrew Scriptures by a process of “creative amplification.” To describe his own position on the development of doctrine, he appeals twice to the effective metaphor about a legend emerging like a pearl from a small irritant. One sign of this process is the exploitation of actual misreadings of the original language and in the manuscript traditions of the Latin Vulgate. He cites the issue of “parthenos” in Isaiah 7.14, the implications of the conjunction in Song of Songs 1.5 “I am black and beautiful” and the confusion at Genesis 3.15 over the gender of the pronoun. Unfortunately Pelikan does not apply his descriptive and textual skills to the apocryphal Protoevangelion of James which became a rich source of the legends and themes about Mary.

Pelikan demonstrates his knowledge of primary evidence in subsequent chapters. In chapters 10 and 12 he deals with Dante’s Divine Comedy and Goethe’s Faust. In chapter 5 he describes the Islamic treatment of Mary in the Qur’an with its respect for her simple obedience, perpetual virginity, and motherhood of Jesus as human.

Pelikan does relate specific themes of theological development to his approach. In Chapter 4 he deals briefly with the Theotokos mentioning the dispute at the Council of Ephesus in 431 but concentrating more on the antecedents of Cyril rather than on the crisis itself. This is surprising in view of the important difference with the Qur’an and the care he takes in chapter 11 to demonstrate the respect in Luther and in other reformers for Mary as Mother of God. Moreover the lack of a stronger focus on the Theotokos contributes to the omission of the significant Renaissance composition of the Madonna and Child. Instead most colored plates deal with the Annunciation and they should be incorporated within the discussion more effectively.

He does deal with a number of doctrinal issues such as his presentation of her status as second Eve, with a particularly appropriate illustration, in chapter 3. He treats Jerome’s contribution to perpetual virginity and Ambrose’s effort to accommodate a respect for the state of marriage in chapter 8, unfortunately without acknowledging some of the current scholarship in this sensitive area. In chapter 14, entitled “the Great Exception” he sketches the long history of the immaculate conception beginning with Carolingian monasticism, noting the reluctance of Bernard of...