Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
The origin or root of Mariolatry has been accounted for in the following manner: "In all Christian ages the especial glory ascribed to the Virgin Mother is purity of heart and life. Gradually in the history of the Christian church, the recognition of this became idolatry. The works of early Christian art commonly exhibit the progress of this perversion. They show how Mariolatry grew up.
It permitted his true character to appear to better advantage. It tore down the scaffolding of Mariolatry, and permitted the God-man to stand forth in his grand proportions. "Wist ye not I must be about my Father's business?" said Jesus. Many men make trouble at home an excuse for going to the bad. It is not an excuse.
They represent the other pole of Mariolatry the gentlemanly pole. And under the influence of Mary-worship a new kind of saintly physiognomy was elaborated, as we can see from contemporary prints and pictures.
The Jesus of Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment" is a terrifying figure without a trace of the lowly Nazarene about Him, and yet this was the Jesus of the conventional Christianity of the time. It was through this dehumanising of Jesus in Christian thought and experience that Mariolatry arose in the Roman church.
As, century after century, the ages roll on, polytheism comes back under the disguise of Mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image-worship becomes as rampant as in old Egypt; adoration of relics takes the place of the old fetish-worship; the virtues of the ephod pale before those of holy coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and calvaries make up for the loss of the ark and of the high places; and even the lustral fluid of paganism is replaced by holy water at the porches of the temples.
All travellers know that Spain is the classic country of Mariolatry; and certainly, if we could divest it of the idea of intercession, which is its foundation, we should find in it much of the poetical, the affectionate, and much of analogy to the temper of a people in which the imagination predominates, and which still preserves many traits of the knightly spirit of its progenitors.
If we, by a certain effort, manage to place ourselves back on the standpoint of childlike poetic faith of that time, and set aside in thought the materializing and exaggeration of the hagiology and Mariolatry produced by later centuries, rendering the reaction of the Reformation unavoidable if now in our age, turned exclusively to logical ideas and a negative dialectic, we live again by thought in those ages of feeling and poetry if we acknowledge all these things to be something more than harmless play of words and fancy, and as the true lifelike contents of the period, then we can properly appreciate this legendary poetry as a necessary link in the crown of pearls of our ancient poetry."
Lidderdale was so lax as to permit his nephew to frequent the services of the Reverend Stephen Ogilvie at Meade Cantorum, where every excess such as incense, lighted candles, mariolatry and creeping to the cross is openly practised. The Revd.
Of the great passions which gave life to the Middle Ages, that of religious enthusiasm had degenerated into the conceits of Mariolatry, that of war into the extravagances of Chivalry. Love indeed remained; it was the one theme of troubadour and trouveur; but it was a love of refinement, of romantic follies, of scholastic discussions, of sensuous enjoyment a plaything rather than a passion.
Against this power we revolt and are thrust aside. The really great delight to recognize this truth, and their prayer is, "Use me for thy glory" and for the world's advantage. Another truth incidentally appears, and furnishes the root of Mariolatry. We come to appear to the world what we really are.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking