Who was Mary of Nazareth and why is she the most famous female figure in the world?

2022-12-26 13:49:32Histori SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Why Mary is the most recognizable female figure in the world

Why is Mary the most famous female figure in the world? The roots of the great popularity of Mary, a character little studied by historians and also neglected by the Gospels.

Mary is the holy character most "seen" or "heard" by ordinary people, even more than God and Jesus Christ. She is therefore a somewhat awkward figure for the Church, and according to many anthropologists reflects the need to reaffirm a feminine dimension to religions, such as those related to fertility and the earth, that were present in Europe for thousands of years before Christianity.

But who was Mary in her time? According to experts, and given the situation of women at that time, Mary must have been a Jewish-Palestinian girl of 14-15 years old, who lived in a modest village in the province of Galilee, Nazareth.

More is not known. Mary is practically absent from the most ancient and original proclamation of the gospel, that of St. Paul, who only says that Jesus was "born of a married woman." Mary is not even mentioned by name. It does not even appear in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew.

Mary does not even appear under the cross, where several other women, including Mary Magdalene, stopped. Only in the Gospel of John is it spoken about the mother of Jesus who was in front of the cross where her son was executed.

"The evangelists Luke and Matthew do not intend to tell us anything about Mary. On the contrary, they focus on the resurrection and messianic role of Jesus, understood as the final Messiah" - explains historian Remo Çaçiti, author of the book "Investigation within Christianity".

According to him, correcting some interpretations of primitive Christian communities, it was necessary to affirm that Jesus does not reveal himself as the Messiah only at the moment of his resurrection or during his baptism. He would be the Messiah from birth. Therefore, Mary's virginity should be understood as an underlining of the unique status of Jesus, and not as a physiological condition of the woman from Nazareth", he says.

But why did her figure become more and more important? This is a very ancient process, which permeates all the so-called apocryphal literature (with no known author) not recognized by the Church, and which generally satisfied the popular curiosity about the Holy Family.

"In Christianity, as in Judaism, there is a complete absence of a female figure. However, Christianity from the beginning transcended the boundaries of the Jewish ethnic group to become multi-ethnic. But in doing so, he had to face the very ancient religious traditions of other peoples, whose deities were often female," says Çaçiti.

Since the 4th century AD Mary was so important that she became the object of conflict within Christianity. Theologians are divided between those who consider the woman anthropotokos (the generator of the man Jesus), and the theotokos, the mother of Christ.

To find a golden mean, the patriarch of the Byzantine Church Nestor coined the term Kristotokos (generator of Christ). But he lost his high post, and in the end the debate was won by the concept of the theotokos (mother of the Lord Jesus) of the Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril.

It is certain that she had a difficult relationship with her son, as evidenced by the Gospel of Mark, which is believed to have been written in 70 AD. When Jesus himself returns to Nazareth to preach, he says that he is not understood by his fellow citizens or his family. And that means Maria didn't understand either. Another episode of the Gospels shows the poverty of Mary, who, when she appears with Jesus in the temple together with Joseph, when the child was only 40 days old, sacrifices a pair of free pigeons instead of the traditional lamb.

And a poor woman in the Jewish society of that time could hardly have access to education. But if Mary appears in early Christian chronicles as a peripheral figure, how can her later popularity be explained? The reasons for its success are internal to Christianity itself, but also external.

According to John, who was the most theologian of all the other evangelists, Mary also went before the cross. The son asked her to become the mother of John and all the apostles in her death. So in the future, Mary will become the symbolic mother of Christians and humanity.

Another reason for Mary's popularity is found in the ancient tradition of a native deity that predates Christianity. Against a variety of pagan names – Isis, Ishtar, Seres, Demeter, Aveta, Latona, Gaia – the concept of a great generative goddess reigned everywhere in popular religion, especially in Europe.

Anthropologist Maria Gimbutash argues that these female deities, who began to appear in the Neolithic period as honorees of fertility, were peaceful and generous. Things changed with the various waves of horse warrior invasions from the Black Sea.

They belonged to the so-called Kurgan culture, based on herd living and plundering, a society where women had an insignificant place. Those conquests influenced the culture of early civilizations in the Middle East, Anatolia, Europe.

From the Sumerians to the Egyptians to the Greeks, female deities were gradually replaced by male ones. However, the pagan goddesses survived many centuries of Christianity and their cults were practiced above all in the mountainous areas, far from the inhabited centers, so much so that they prompted Saint Jerome in the fourth century to attack all those who "did not know the Creator and worshiped the stones".

However, a compromise had to be reached: Many places dedicated to pagan female divinities were transformed into sanctuaries of Mary, a kind of pedagogical mechanism of the Church that had to take into account popular tradition.

Pope Gregory the Great recognized that "instead of destroying the pagan holy places, it is better to convert them into Christian Churches, since it is in fact impossible to cleanse them of their errors, and at a single blow they rude spirits…”. Thus, ancient myths about feminine, peaceful, maternal, regenerative, and in many cases merciful entities ended up merging into the cult of Mary.

Taken with cuts from Focus.it

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