From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. (Reviews).

Donna Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in late Medieval and Early Modern Europe 

Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001. xii + 284 pp. $59.95. ISBN: 0-8132-1014-3.

Little is known about the historical Mary of Nazareth. Yet the Virgin Mary has through the centuries served as the most prominent figure in Christian piety, after Jesus himself. Though explicit references in the New Testament to Mary the mother of Jesus are limited, Christian thought almost from the beginning reflected on her meaning within the biblical message. Generations of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim scholars have analyzed and elaborated on the development of the symbolic and doctrinal role of Mary throughout history.

The shift in the emphasis on Mary as "supreme intercessor and mediatrix" in the later Middle Ages to Mary as the "spiritual" mother of Christ in post-Tridentine Catholicism, is the focus of an insightful book by Donna Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. The study examines religious and social change within the sixteenth century -- which brought the Protestant Reformation -- and their impact on the Catholic faith as viewed from the perspective of popular sermons and Marian devotion.

Ellington argues that over the course of the sixteenth century, European piety changed from an externalized faith that valued devotional objects, such as relics, to an internalized focus that emphasized mental prayer, while maintaining the importance of the sacraments and some traditional popular practices. Ellington attributes these changes in European piety and Marian devotion to a number of factors, including the rise of printing and the subsequent growth of literacy among the upper and middle classes and the clergy after 1450, as well as the growth of more rigorous confessional practices and institutional centralization after Trent, formerly confined to the clergy and expanded to include all the faithful. This latter shift became evident in the growth of many popular Marian confraternities and societies that encouraged daily examination of conscience and the regular recitation of the rosary.

A central argument in From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul, is that between the later medieval ages and the seventeenth century, the focus of Marian devotion was transformed from an emphasis on Mary's human body and motherhood to an emphasis on her soul and spiritual relationship with Christ. Marian devotion of the later Middle Ages emphasized the physical contribution of the Virgin Mary, and through shared humanity / flesh with Jesus, an active participant in his earthly and heavenly life, as seen through the cross, the resurrection, and the Eucharist. Ellington asserts that Mary's role as Jesus' biological mother was downplayed by the late sixteenth century due to social and institutional pressures to concretize her role in church life. Preachers then emphasized Mary's purity, holiness, and spiritual motherhood of Christ. Though medieval sensibilities and devotion to the Virgin Mary did not change overnight, "there is no mistaking the attempt by Counter-Reformation clergy to establish a more passive and spiritu alized Virgin -- humble, obedient, prayerful, silent, and devoted to good works while on earth; interceding, still humbly for the faithful once she reached heaven -- as a model for the type of Catholic they hoped to foster after Trent" (248).

Ellington draws on evidence from a broad range of extant sermon literature, much of which is not translated in modern editions.

The first half of From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul is devoted to an explanation of Marian devotion in late medieval oral culture, though the crux of Ellington's thesis lies in the second half of the book, devoted to post-Tridentine preachers. Portions of this book have been expanded from a 1995 article by the author in Renaissance Quarterly. The book makes an important contribution to and elaboration of the historiography of the interpretation of the body in Christianity, Marian devotion, and the role of women and religion, particularly in regard to the work of Caroline Walker Bynum, Margaret Miles, Gail McMurray Gibson, and Theresa Coletti. Overall, Ellington agrees that the inheritance of the Virgin Mary is a positive one for women in that her prominence suggests that women and motherhood need not be denigrated.