Alone of All Her Sex: Cult of the Virgin Mary by Marina Warner

Description

Ms. Warner, in this book, gives an exhaustive historical analysis of the cult of the Virgin Mary – how it started, spread, was opposed, fought the opposition and triumphed. What it lacks is the mythological perspective, except for tracing the connections between Osiris, Isis and Horus to the Virgin and the child and for the casual references to Jung’s concept the divine feminine (which she actually debunks). For Marina, Mary is the conscious creation of the Church to sublimate the feminine into the fold of patriarchal religion.

This book is effectively the story of those accretions, how bit by bit, layer by layer, the position of the Virgin Mary within the Church has been established and solidified. Along the way, Marina Warner looks at nigh on two thousand years of art, poetry, sculpture, architecture, devotions, traditions, visions, miracles, all of which have shaped and have been shaped by the perception of Mary in relation to the predominant culture of the time. Images of the Virgin have risen and fallen in direct correlation to cultural and societal mores – at times she was depicted as regal and queenly, other times meek and humble. Sometimes she has been very human, other times mighty and goddess-like. Sometimes she has bowed her head, and sometimes she is seen smiting Satan and other enemies. In many ways, the Virgin has been depicted in precisely the way a culture or society needs her to be – and the very lack of any scriptural dogma has been at the very root of this.