Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion

Shoemaker, Stephen J.

doi:10.12987/yale/9780300217216.001.0001

Cited by 34 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…39 Finally, "The book which is called the Assumption of holy Mary" refers to the corpus of writings on Mary's miraculous transfer in body and soul to Paradise at her death. 40 This extremely diverse tradition, which emerged into mainstream Christian discourse around the end of the fifth century, has a prehistory that is hard to trace. 41 It is thus impossible to know exactly which of the texts within this tradition that this title is referring to.…”

Section: Women and Unruly Titles In The Apocryphal Listmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and unruly titles in the booklists of the Gelasian Decree

Solevåg

2023

Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha

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This essay offers a new perspective on the booklists of the Gelasian Decree ( Decretum Gelasianium) from the sixth century. In this document’s apocryphal booklist, there are several titles featuring female or feminine names that exhibit a certain unruliness. Whether known only by title or by many titles, these entries pose the question of why female figures and texts not usually associated with heresy are constructed under this rubric in the Gelasian Decree. By untangling the lists from the academic discourse on canon and rather understanding them in the context of the document as a whole, the essay offers a fresh reading of the relations between gender, apocryphal books, and church hierarchy. Through an analysis of the occurrences of female/feminine names and signifiers throughout the text, it is found that while male figures are associated with God, the church hierarchy, and canonical and legitimate literature, the categories of apocrypha and heresy are feminized. It is argued that the “unruly” book titles in the Gelasian Degree ultimately resist the organizing efforts of its author.

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Section: Women and Unruly Titles In The Apocryphal Listmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and unruly titles in the booklists of the Gelasian Decree

Solevåg

2023

Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha

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“…from Hermkens et al 2009). We should also mention the volumes devoted to an in-depth analysis of particular case of an apparition site or of a nation-state, for example, Hill 1987, Fawrot Peterson 1991, Sered 1991, Connel 1992, Blackbourn 1994, Pieper and van Uden, 1994, Tweed 1997, Jurkovich and Gessler 1997, Galbraith 2000, Skrbis 2005, Sklar 2005, Busser and Niedźwiedź 2009, Harris 2013, Maunder 2013, Cosentino 2014, Povedák 2014, Notermans and Jansen 2015, Halemba 2016, Shoemaker 2016, Socorro Castañeda-Liles 2018 It is perhaps due to the interrupted tradition in post-Communist Europe or the lack of officially approved Marian apparitions in the region (of Lourdes or Fatima type), or the overly complicated and intricate situation in the region undergoing profound multi-spectral transformation that there is a gap in systematic scholar knowledge on Marian devotion in this particular region.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary Models of Marian Discourse in Slovakia

Kečka¹

2020

Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-Communist Europe

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According to the 2001 census, the majority of Slovakia's population statistically follows the Catholic confession of Roman or Byzantine rites. In both rites, the Marian devotion has a consider- able place in religious reflection and spirituality. This study explores the religious discourse of the Marian devotion as it appears in available books and booklets on this topic. The main focus of the chapter is a comparison of the Marian discourse in Slovakia (representing a post-socialist country) and the Marian discourse in neighbouring Austria (representing a ‘Western’ country with no socialist history). For this purpose, a sample of Mariological reflections and spiritual texts was created based on their availability in all Catholic bookstores in the capital of Slovakia (Bratislava) and the capital of Austria (Vienna). The reason for this choice is that these bookstores offer books that mirror the living intellectual and religious brainstorming and reflect Christianity, in par-ticularly the pattern of the Marian discourse of the recent decades in both countries. The study comments on the absence of modern Marian literature in Slovak bookstores. The author also analyses the Marian vocabulary and topics in the both samples. The author distinguishes three existing models of the Marian discourse in Slovakia, all of traditional origin, portraying Mary as an unselfish and patient mother, Mary loving conditionally and restraining God's anger; Mary leading the legions against Satan and crushing his head. All three models are based on the traditional images of Mary and, within the Christian communities, are not understood as contradictory, but complementary. Compared to Western Christianity, the Marian discourse in Slovakia lacks two recurrent models: (1) the progressive 20th/21st century model, and (2) the traditionalist and fundamentalist mod- el. The first model has created a Marian vocabulary and contents representing a self-confident, social and communicative model of Mary. This model presents an alternative to the old models combining mild or triumphant vocabulary with mild or triumphant contents. The second model which is absent among Slovak believers is the Marian discourse of the traditionalist and fundamentalist groups of each age tolerated by official Church structures. These traditionalist and fundamentalist groups return to the old Marian vocabulary and contents that is triumphant, militant and – in this modern version – has an offensive character. This form of discourse, created as a reaction to progressive Christian groups – did not emerge in Slovakia, since there were no progressive Christian movements. Based on the research of the author, the Slovak Marian re- flection and spirituality result from traditional beliefs, having no affinity to Western progressive and traditionalist models. In this regard, it can be stated that Slovakia's isolation from the European spiritual development, which has caused traditional devotion to be fixed in its forms, is, paradoxically, continuing also after the fall of Communism in the era of religious freedom. The comparative discoursive analysis of Mariological literature in Slovakia and its Western neighbour – Austria has showed that the Slovak religious landscape is far more traditional (but not traditionalist) than the current trends in the ‘Western’ religious discourse.

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Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marian Dedications within the Current Cultural Space of Slovakia

Majo¹

2020

Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-Communist Europe

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Cultural geography (as the main field in geography with no connection to religion) is strongly influenced by constructivist approaches today. Geographer Doreen Masey wrote in 2010 (Massey 2010: 107) that space is always being made and always, therefore, in a sense, unfinished. The ‘always’ is rather that there are always connections yet to be made, juxtapositions yet to flower into interaction, or not, potential links which may never be established. Loose ends and ongoing stories. With these ideas she perfectly outlined the relationship of space, time, and social world. In the field of religious identity and its expression it indicates not just variability of its representations but can also work as a hub to the local projections of identity interactions and how this space is formed within local actors and local circumstances. All interactions within the various scales forms two paradigms of how place and space can be analysed – as politics and poetics of space. If the cult of the Virgin Mary prevails within the Catholic religious practice, then the poetics and politics of space can have vast forms of expression and impacts. This chapter attempts to outline the spatiality of this cult represented in dedications of sacred buildings, and open up questions on forming such distributions and regional specificities in Slovakia. Research on the spatial aspects of dedications of sacred buildings provide interesting intersections of relations between sacred and profane as well as various levels of research resulting in a relationship between the ‘politics’ and ‘poetics’ of place. This chapter introduces such relationship within cultural geography. Although this approach is fully applicable in local or regional research, we have outlined the spatial aspects of the cult of the Virgin Mary as embodied in the dedication of sacred buildings, introducing the differences in the types of such dedication. The link between time and space is observed in living as well as obliterated dedications, which helps us understand in a very broad sense the dynamics of construction and maintenance of sacred space and the projections of initiatives at various levels of political administration with an impact on the poetics of space and community. Research on the spatial distribution of dedications in Slovakia is still a little explored field, even though the extensive data sources are relatively high in quality and quantity and enable the interpretation of different relations in various scales. In the con- text of important dedications, it is the Marian ones that have a significant position in church life and are the most common ones, reflecting the intensity of the worship of the Virgin Mary within the Slovak environment. The research also indicates that the importance and popularity of Marian dedications are accompanied by great diversity with growth over time. It also reflects on the background based on social changes, such as the extinction of the Kingdom of Hungary, the declaration of Our Lady of Sorrows as the patron of Slovakia, etc.

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Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Gender and unruly titles in the booklists of the Gelasian Decree

Gender and unruly titles in the booklists of the Gelasian Decree

Contemporary Models of Marian Discourse in Slovakia

Marian Dedications within the Current Cultural Space of Slovakia

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