About this course

More holy than any other saint but still herself a creature of God, no figure of Christian devotion other than Christ has inspired as much piety or excited as much controversy as Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. In this course, we will study the development of the Virgin’s image and cult from her descriptions in the Gospels through the modern papal definitions of Marian dogma so as to come to some understanding how and why this woman “about whom the Gospels say so little” has become a figure of such popular and theological significance. We will consider both the late antique origins and medieval flowering of her cult as well as its dismantling, transformation, transmission, and reinvention in the centuries since.