Alone of All Her Sex: Myth and Cult of Virgin Mary

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I am a catholic, and one of my favorite subjects is mariology. I personally find this book illuminating in the fact that for many years many (male) theologians have used the figure of the Virgin Mary to oppress women in many different ways. I admire Marina Warner's work.

However, not always Marian dogmas are used in such a way. I think that this book makes an extraordinary point against the devotions to the Virgin Mary, but avoids the fact that also such devotions have been used to free women.

Rating:
Summary: Excuse me, your bias is showing.
Review: Notice that if you have an encounter with the Virgin Mary. . . and write about it you are biased. If you have a feminist axe to grind and write from the point of view of philosophic naturalism, you are scholarly.

This is political correctness applied to Mary.

Yawn.

JMNR

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, well researched
Review: The fact remains that this book offers a very solid and accurately researched survey of the development of the "phenomenon" of devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is not exhaustive by any means, but traces all the major strains of development from at least the third century. What the book fails to do adequately is critically delve into the real roots of Marian themes as found in the New Testament records. Indeed, what we see in the very first century of the Christian/Biblical era is a rather rapid (and radical) development of attitudes about the Mother of Jesus, a shift from early indifference and ignorance of Mary's role (the Marcan Gospel, Pauline letters) to an outright "lifting up" of Mary as the Ideal Christian, the First True Disciple, worthy of loud praise (Luke), and even iconic status as Eve-Israel 'Mother of believers'(John) and glorified symbol of the Church itself (Revelation). I wish Werner had spent more time drawing attention to how swift and startling these developments in the understanding of Mary were when the New Testament writings were being composed. Also, how did these "arcs of thought" regarding Mary take root geographically in the 2nd century church? Werner could have noted that it was no coincidence that Gospel communities giving great prominence to the figure of Mary(Luke's Antioch, the Johannine churches) in the first century continued to preserve these emphases in the 2nd (Ignatius of Anioch, Irenaeus-Justin, etc). Otherwise, Werner gives a solid depiction of how formative ecclesiastical motives (asceticism, Christological controversy) rattled the chains of Mary's rather flexible image in the patristic age, and how her mystique lent itself so readily to mythical, legendary rumblings about her death, intercessory powers, etc. A fascinating handbook and not even remotely [a] feminist manifesto ... It seems that some would have a hard time handling the reality that much of what Mary represents was a complex combination of iconic mythologizing that began in Scriptural/Apostolic times and only grew in succeeding centuries according to the demands of the age and normal human piety.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous resource
Review: This was a fabulous resource for understanding the evolution of the Marian cult. The one weakness of this book is that it did not deal with the pre-Christian origins of the Marian cult. Other resources, however, cover the evolution of the Anatolian fertility cult of Cybele into the Roman Magna Mater and later into the so-called "BVM". The author does a good job of showing the origins of various aspects of Mariology and contrasting these developments with Christianity in the West. The author has done a great service to those who wish to more fully understand the syncretic process which blended Christianity with various pagan religions and medeival political structures to create the Roman Catholic Church.