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December 8
Immaculate Conception
1854
The
doctrine
In
the Constitution Ineffabilis
Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that
|
the Blessed Virgin Mary
"in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the
Saviour of the human
race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin." |
"The
Blessed Virgin Mary..."
The subject of this immunity from original sin is the person of Mary at the moment of the
creation of her soul and its infusion
into her body.
"...in
the first instance of her conception..."
The term conception does not mean
the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was
formed in the womb of the mother,
and the father had the
usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness
of the generative activity of her parents. Neither does it
concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis
carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the
infusion of the rational soul.
The person is truly
conceived when the soul
is created and infused
into the body. Mary
was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first
moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was
given to her before sin
could have taken effect in her soul.
"...was
preserved exempt from all stain of original sin..."
The formal active essence of original sin was not
removed from her soul,
as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded,
it never was in her soul.
Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin. The state of
original sanctity,
innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was
conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and
fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities,
essentially pertaining to original
sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties
of Adam — from sorrow,
bodily infirmities, and death.
"...by
a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus
Christ, the Saviour of the human race."
The immunity from original sin was given to
Mary by a singular
exemption from a universal law
through the same merits
of Christ, by which
other men are cleansed
from sin by baptism. Mary needed the redeeming Saviour to
obtain this exemption, and to be delivered from the universal necessity and debt (debitum)
of being subject to original
sin. The person of
Mary, in consequence
of her origin from Adam,
should have been subject to sin,
but, being the new Eve
who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from
the general law of original
sin. Her redemption
was the very masterpiece of Christ's
redeeming wisdom. He is a greater redeemer who pays the debt that it may not be
incurred than he who pays after it has fallen on the debtor.
Such is the meaning of the term
"Immaculate Conception."
Proof
from Scripture
Genesis
3:15
No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought
forward from Scripture.
But the first scriptural
passage which contains the promise
of the redemption,
mentions also the Mother
of the Redeemer. The sentence
against the first parents
was accompanied by the Earliest Gospel (Proto-evangelium), which put
enmity between the serpent
and the woman:
"and I will put enmity between thee and the woman and her seed; she
(he) shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her (his) heel" (Genesis 3:15). The
translation "she" of the Vulgate is
interpretative; it originated after the fourth century, and cannot be defended
critically. The conqueror from the seed of the woman, who should crush
the serpent's head, is Christ;
the woman at enmity
with the serpent is Mary. God puts enmity between
her and Satan in the
same manner and measure, as there is enmity between Christ and the seed of
the serpent. Mary was
ever to be in that exalted state of soul which the serpent
had destroyed in man,
i.e. in sanctifying grace.
Only the continual union of Mary
with grace explains
sufficiently the enmity between her and Satan. The
Proto-evangelium, therefore, in the original text contains a direct promise of
the Redeemer, and in
conjunction therewith the manifestation of the masterpiece of His Redemption, the perfect
preservation of His virginal
Mother from original
sin.
Luke
1:28
The salutation of the angel Gabriel — chaire
kecharitomene, Hail, full of grace (Luke 1:28) indicates
a unique abundance of grace,
a supernatural,
godlike state of soul,
which finds its explanation only in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But the term kecharitomene
(full of grace) serves
only as an illustration, not as a proof of the dogma.
Other
texts
From the texts Proverbs 8 and Ecclesiasticus 24 (which
exalt the Wisdom of God
and which in the liturgy
are applied to Mary,
the most beautiful work of God's
Wisdom), or from the Canticle
of Canticles (4:7,
"Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee"), no theological conclusion
can be drawn. These passages, applied to the Mother of God, may be
readily understood by those who know the privilege of Mary, but do not avail to
prove the doctrine dogmatically, and are
therefore omitted from the Constitution "Ineffabilis Deus". For the
theologian it is a matter of conscience not to take an
extreme position by applying to a creature texts which might imply the
prerogatives of God.
Proof
from Tradition
In regard to the sinlessness of Mary the older Fathers are very
cautious: some of them even seem to have been in error on this matter.
But these stray private opinions merely
serve to show that theology
is a progressive science.
If we were to attempt to set forth the full doctrine of the Fathers on the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, which
includes particularly the implicit belief in the
immaculateness of her conception, we should be forced to transcribe a multitude
of passages. In the testimony of the Fathers two points are
insisted upon: her absolute purity and her position as the second Eve (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:22).
Mary
as the second Eve
This celebrated comparison between Eve, while yet immaculate
and incorrupt — that is to say, not subject to original sin — and the Blessed Virgin is
developed by:
The
absolute purity of Mary
Patristic writings on Mary's purity abound.
St. John Damascene (Or. i
Nativ. Deip., n. 2) esteems the supernatural influence of
God at the generation
of Mary to be so
comprehensive that he extends it also to her parents. He says of them
that, during the generation, they were filled and purified by the Holy Ghost, and freed
from sexual concupiscence.
Consequently according to the Damascene, even the human
element of her origin, the material of which she was formed, was pure and holy. This opinion of an
immaculate active generation and the sanctity of the
"conceptio carnis" was taken up by some Western authors; it was
put forward by Petrus
Comestor in his treatise against St. Bernard and by
others. Some writers even taught that Mary was born of a virgin and that she was
conceived in a miraculous
manner when Joachim and Anne
met at the golden gate of the temple (Trombelli, "Mari SS. Vita", Sect. V, ii, 8; Summa
aurea, II, 948. Cf. also the "Revelations" of Catherine Emmerich which
contain the entire apocryphal
legend of the miraculous
conception of Mary.
From this summary it appears that the belief in Mary's immunity from sin in her conception was
prevalent amongst the Fathers, especially those of the Greek Church. The
rhetorical character, however, of many of these and similar passages prevents
us from laying too much stress on them, and interpreting them in a strictly
literal sense. The Greek
Fathers never formally
or explicitly discussed the question of the Immaculate Conception.
The
conception of St. John the Baptist
A comparison with the conception of Christ and that of St.
John may serve to light both on the dogma and on the reasons
which led the Greeks to celebrate at an early date the Feast of the Conception
of Mary.
Of these three conceptions the Church celebrates feasts. The Orientals have a Feast of
the Conception of St. John the Baptist (23 September), which dates back to the fifth
century; it is thus older than the Feast of the Conception of Mary, and, during
the Middle Ages, was
kept also by many Western
dioceses on 24
September. The Conception of Mary is celebrated by the Latins on 8 December; by
the Orientals on 9
December; the Conception of Christ has its feast in the universal calendar on 25 March. In
celebrating the feast
of Mary's Conception the Greeks of old did not consider the theological distinction
of the active and the passive conceptions, which was indeed unknown to them.
They did not think it absurd to celebrate a conception which was not
immaculate, as we see from the Feast of the Conception of St. John. They
solemnized the Conception of Mary, perhaps because, according to the "Proto-evangelium"
of St. James, it was preceded by miraculous events (the apparition of an angel to Joachim, etc.),
similar to those which preceded the conception of St. John, and that of our Lord Himself. Their
object was less the purity of the conception than the holiness and heavenly mission of the person conceived. In the
Office of 9 December, however, Mary, from the time of her conception,
is called beautiful, pure, holy,
just, etc., terms never used in the Office of 23 September (sc. of St. John the Baptist).
The analogy of St. John's sanctification
may have given rise to the Feast of the Conception of Mary. If it was necessary that the precursor of the Lord
should be so pure and "filled with the Holy Ghost" even
from his mother's
womb, such a purity was assuredly not less befitting His Mother. The moment of
St. John's
sanctification is by later writers thought to be the Visitation ("the
infant leaped in her womb"), but the angel's words (Luke 1:15) seem to
indicate a sanctification at the conception. This would render the origin of Mary more similar to that
of John. And if the
Conception of John had
its feast, why not
that of Mary?
Proof
from reason
There is an incongruity in the supposition
that the flesh, from which the flesh of the Son of God was to be
formed, should ever have belonged to one who was the slave of that arch-enemy, whose power
He came on earth to destroy. Hence the axiom of Pseudo-Anselmus (Eadmer) developed by Duns Scotus, Decuit,
potuit, ergo fecit, it was becoming that the Mother of the Redeemer should
have been free from the power of sin and from the first
moment of her existence;
God could give her
this privilege,
therefore He gave it to her. Again it is remarked that a peculiar privilege was granted to
the prophet Jeremiah
and to St. John the
Baptist. They were sanctified in their mother's womb, because by their
preaching they had a special share in the work of preparing the way for Christ. Consequently some
much higher prerogative is due to Mary. (A treatise of P. Marchant, claiming for
St. Joseph also the privilege
of St. John, was
placed on the Index in
1833.) Scotus says
that "the perfect Mediator
must, in some one case, have done the work of mediation most perfectly, which
would not be unless there was some one person at least, in whose
regard the wrath of God
was anticipated and not merely appeased."
The
feast of the Immaculate Conception
The older feast of the Conception
of Mary (Conception of St. Anne), which originated in the monasteries of Palestine
at least as early as the seventh century, and the modern feast of the Immaculate
Conception are not identical in their object.
Originally the Church celebrated only
the Feast of the Conception of Mary, as she kept the Feast of St. John's conception, not
discussing the sinlessness. This feast in the course of
centuries became the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as dogmatical
argumentation brought about precise and correct ideas, and as the thesis
of the theological
schools regarding the preservation of Mary from all stain of original sin gained
strength. Even after the dogma
had been universally accepted in the Latin Church, and had
gained authoritative support through diocesan decrees and papal decisions, the old
term remained, and before 1854 the term "Immaculata Conceptio" is
nowhere found in the liturgical
books, except in the invitatorium
of the Votive Office
of the Conception. The Greeks, Syrians, etc. call it the
Conception of St. Anne (Eullepsis tes hagias kai theoprometoros Annas,
"the Conception of St. Anne, the ancestress of God").
Passaglia in his "De
Immaculato Deiparae Conceptu," basing his opinion upon the
"Typicon" of St. Sabas: which was substantially composed in the fifth
century, believes that
the reference to the feast
forms part of the authentic
original, and that consequently it was celebrated in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in the fifth
century (III, n. 1604). But the Typicon was interpolated by the Damascene, Sophronius, and others,
and, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, many new feasts and offices were added.
To determine the origin of this feast we must take into
account the genuine
documents we possess, the oldest of which is the canon of the feast, composed by St. Andrew of Crete, who
wrote his liturgical hymns in the second half
of the seventh century, when a monk at the monastery of St. Sabas
near Jerusalem (d. Archbishop of Crete about
720). But the solemnity
cannot then have been generally accepted throughout the Orient, for John, first monk and later bishop in the Isle of
Euboea, about 750 in a sermon,
speaking in favour of the propagation of this feast, says that it was
not yet known to all
the faithful (ei
kai me para tois pasi gnorizetai; P.G., XCVI, 1499). But a century later
George of Nicomedia, made metropolitan
by Photius in 860,
could say that the solemnity
was not of recent origin (P.G., C, 1335). It is therefore, safe to affirm that the feast of the Conception
of St. Anne appears in the Orient not earlier than the end of the seventh or
the beginning of the eighth century.
As in other cases of the same kind the feast originated in the monastic communities. The
monks, who arranged
the psalmody and composed the various poetical pieces for the office, also
selected the date, 9
December, which was always retained in the Oriental calendars. Gradually the solemnity emerged from
the cloister, entered
into the cathedrals,
was glorified by preachers and poets, and eventually became a fixed feast of the calendar, approved by Church and State.
It is registered in the calendar of Basil II
(976-1025) and by the Constitution of Emperor Manuel I Comnenus on the days of
the year which are half or entire holidays, promulgated in 1166, it
is numbered among the days which have full sabbath rest. Up to the time of Basil II, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia still belonged
to the Byzantine Empire;
the city of Naples was
not lost to the Greeks until 1127, when Roger II conquered the city. The
influence of Constantinople
was consequently strong in the Neapolitan Church, and,
as early as the ninth century, the Feast of the Conception was doubtlessly kept
there, as elsewhere in Lower Italy on 9 December, as
indeed appears from the marble calendar found in 1742 in the Church of S.
Giorgio Maggiore at Naples.
Today the Conception of St. Anne is in the Greek Church one of the
minor feasts of the
year. The lesson in Matins contains allusions
to the apocryphal
"Proto-evangelium" of St. James, which dates from the second
half of the second century (see SAINT ANNE). To the Greek Orthodox of our days,
however, the feast
means very little; they continue to call it "Conception of St. Anne",
indicating unintentionally, perhaps, the active conception which was certainly
not immaculate. In the Menaea
of 9 December this feast
holds only the second place, the first canon being sung in commemoration of the
dedication of the
Church of the Resurrection at Constantinople. The
Russian hagiographer
Muraview and several other Orthodox authors even loudly declaimed against the dogma after its promulgation, although
their own preachers formerly taught the Immaculate Conception in their writings
long before the definition
of 1854.
In the Western Church the feast appeared (8
December), when in the Orient
its development had come to a standstill. The timid beginnings of the new feast in some Anglo-Saxon monasteries in the
eleventh century, partly smothered by the Norman conquest, were followed by its
reception in some chapters and dioceses by the
Anglo-Norman clergy.
But the attempts to introduce it officially provoked contradiction and
theoretical discussion, bearing upon its legitimacy and its meaning, which were
continued for centuries and were not definitively settled before 1854. The
"Martyrology of Tallaght" compiled about 790 and the
"Feilire" of St. Aengus (800) register the Conception of Mary on 3
May. It is doubtful,
however, if an actual feast
corresponded to this rubric
of the learned monk
St. Aengus. This Irish
feast certainly stands
alone and outside the line of liturgical development.
It is a mere isolated appearance, not a living germ. The Scholiast adds, in the
lower margin of the "Feilire", that the conception (Inceptio) took
place in February, since Mary
was born after seven months — a singular notion found also in some Greek
authors. The first definite and reliable knowledge of the feast in the West comes from England; it is found in a
calendar of Old
Minster, Winchester
(Conceptio S'ce Dei Genetricis Mari), dating from about 1030, and in another calendar of New Minster, Winchester, written
between 1035 and 1056; a pontifical
of Exeter of the
eleventh century (assigned to 1046-1072) contains a "benedictio in
Conceptione S. Mariae"; a similar benediction is found in a
Canterbury pontifical written
probably in the first half of the eleventh century, certainly before the
Conquest. These episcopal benedictions show that the feast not only commended
itself to the devotion of individuals, but that it was recognized by authority
and was observed by the Saxon
monks with
considerable solemnity.
The existing evidence goes to show that the establishment of the feast in England was due to the monks of Winchester before the
Conquest (1066).
The Normans on their arrival in England were disposed to
treat in a contemptuous fashion English liturgical observances;
to them this feast
must have appeared specifically English, a product of insular simplicity and ignorance. Doubtless its
public celebration was abolished at Winchester and Canterbury, but it did
not die out of the hearts of individuals, and on the first favourable
opportunity the feast
was restored in the monasteries.
At Canterbury however,
it was not re-established before 1328. Several documents state that in Norman
times it began at Ramsey,
pursuant to a vision vouchsafed to Helsin or Æthelsige, Abbot of Ramsey on his journey
back from Denmark,
whither he had been sent by William I about 1070. An angel appeared to him
during a severe gale and saved the ship after the abbot had promised to
establish the Feast of the Conception in his monastery. However we may
consider the supernatural
feature of the legend, it must be admitted that the sending of Helsin to Denmark is an historical
fact. The account of the vision has found its way into many breviaries, even into the
Roman Breviary of
1473. The Council of Canterbury
(1325) attributes the re-establishment of the feast in England to St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1109). But
although this great doctor
wrote a special treatise "De Conceptu virginali et originali
peccato", by which he laid down the principles of the Immaculate
Conception, it is certain
that he did not introduce the feast anywhere. The
letter ascribed to him, which contains the Helsin narrative, is spurious. The
principal propagator of the feast
after the Conquest was Anselm, the nephew of St. Anselm. He was educated at Canterbury where he may
have known some Saxon monks who remembered the solemnity in former days;
after 1109 he was for a time Abbot of St. Sabas at Rome, where the Divine Offices were
celebrated according to the Greek calendar. When in 1121 he
was appointed Abbot of
Bury St. Edmund's he
established the feast
there; partly at least through his efforts other monasteries also adopted
it, like Reading, St. Albans, Worcester, Gloucester,
and Winchcombe.
But a number of others decried its
observance as hitherto unheard of and absurd, the old Oriental feast being unknown to
them. Two bishops,
Roger of Salisbury and Bernard of St. Davids, declared that the festival was forbidden by
a council, and that the observance must be stopped. And when, during the vacancy of the See of London, Osbert de
Clare, Prior of Westminster, undertook to
introduce the feast at
Westminster (8
December, 1127), a number of monks arose against him
in the choir and said that the feast must not be kept,
for its establishment had not the authority of Rome (cf. Osbert's letter
to Anselm in Bishop,
p. 24). Whereupon the matter was brought before the Council of London in 1129. The synod decided in favour
of the feast, and Bishop Gilbert of London
adopted it for his diocese.
Thereafter the feast
spread in England, but
for a time retained its private character, the Synod of Oxford (1222)
having refused to raise it to the rank of a holiday of obligation.
In Normandy at the time of
Bishop Rotric (1165-83) the Conception of Mary, in the Archdiocese of Rouen and
its six suffragan dioceses,
was a feast of precept equal in dignity
to the Annunciation.
At the same time the Norman students at the University of Paris chose
it as their patronal feast.
Owing to the close connection of Normandy with England, it may have been
imported from the latter country into Normandy, or the Norman
barons and clergy may
have brought it home from their wars in Lower Italy, it was universally
solemnised by the Greek inhabitants. During the Middle Ages the Feast of
the Conception of Mary was commonly called the "Feast of the Norman
nation", which shows that it was celebrated in Normandy with great
splendour and that it spread from there over Western Europe. Passaglia contends (III,
1755) that the feast
was celebrated in Spain
in the seventh century. Bishop
Ullathorne also (p. 161) finds this opinion acceptable. If this be true, it is difficult to
understand why it should have entirely disappeared from Spain later on, for
neither does the genuine Mozarabic
Liturgy contain it,
nor the tenth century calendar of Toledo edited by Morin. The two proofs given by Passaglia are futile: the
life of St. Isidore,
falsely attributed to St.
Ildephonsus, which mentions the feast, is interpolated,
while, in the Visigoth
lawbook, the expression "Conceptio S. Mariae" is to be understood of
the Annunciation.
The
controversy
No controversy arose over the Immaculate
Conception on the European
continent before the twelfth century. The Norman clergy abolished the feast in some monasteries of England where it had been
established by the Anglo-Saxon
monks. But towards the
end of the eleventh century, through the efforts of Anselm the Younger, it
was taken up again in several Anglo-Norman establishments. That St. Anselm the Elder
re-established the feast
in England is highly
improbable, although it was not new to him. He had been made familiar with it
as well by the Saxon monks of Canterbury, as by the
Greeks with whom he came in contact during exile in Campania and Apulin
(1098-9). The treatise "De Conceptu virginali" usually ascribed to
him, was composed by his friend and disciple, the Saxon monk Eadmer of Canterbury.
When the canons of the cathedral
of Lyons, who no doubt knew Anselm the Younger Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's,
personally introduced the feast
into their choir after the death of their bishop in 1240, St. Bernard deemed it his
duty to publish a
protest against this new way of honouring Mary. He addressed to the
canons a vehement letter (Epist. 174), in which he reproved them for taking the
step upon their own authority and before they had consulted the Holy See. Not knowing
that the feast had been
celebrated with the rich tradition of the Greek and Syrian Churches regarding the
sinlessness of Mary,
he asserted that the feast
was foreign to the old tradition
of the Church. Yet it
is evident from the tenor of his language that he had in mind only the active
conception or the formation of the flesh, and that the distinction between the
active conception, the formation of the body, and its animation by the soul had not yet been
drawn. No doubt, when the feast
was introduced in England
and Normandy, the
axiom "decuit, potuit, ergo fecit", the childlike piety and
enthusiasm of the simplices building upon revelations and apocryphal legends, had
the upper hand. The object of the feast was not clearly
determined, no positive theological
reasons had been placed in evidence.
St. Bernard was perfectly
justified when he demanded a careful inquiry into the reasons for observing the
feast. Not adverting
to the possibility of sanctification at the time of the infusion of the soul, he writes that
there can be question only of sanctification after conception, which would
render holy the
nativity, not the conception itself (Scheeben,
"Dogmatik", III, p. 550). Hence Albert the Great
observes: "We say that the Blessed Virgin was not
sanctified before animation, and the affirmative contrary to this is the heresy condemned by St. Bernard in his epistle to the canons of Lyons" (III Sent.,
dist. iii, p. I, ad 1, Q. i).
St. Bernard was at once
answered in a treatise written by either Richard of St. Victor or Peter Comestor. In this
treatise appeal is made to a feast which had been
established to commemorate an insupportable tradition. It maintained
that the flesh of Mary
needed no purification; that it was sanctified before the conception. Some
writers of those times entertained the fantastic idea that before Adam fell, a portion of
his flesh had been reserved by God and transmitted from
generation to generation, and that out of this flesh the body of Mary was formed (Scheeben, op. cit., III,
551), and this formation they commemorated by a feast. The letter of St. Bernard did not
prevent the extension of the feast, for in 1154 it was
observed all over France,
until in 1275, through the efforts of the Paris University, it was
abolished in Paris and
other dioceses.
After the saint's death the
controversy arose anew between Nicholas of St. Albans, an English monk who defended the festival as established
in England, and Peter Cellensis, the
celebrated Bishop of Chartres. Nicholas remarks
that the soul of Mary was pierced twice by
the sword, i.e. at the foot of the cross and when St. Bernard wrote his
letter against her feast
(Scheeben, III, 551).
The point continued to be debated throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and illustrious names appeared on each side. St. Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and Albert the Great are
quoted as opposing it.
St. Thomas at first pronounced in favour of
the doctrine in his
treatise on the "Sentences" (in I. Sent. c. 44, q. I ad 3), yet in
his "Summa Theologica"
he concluded against it. Much discussion has arisen as to whether St. Thomas
did or did not deny that the Blessed Virgin was
immaculate at the instant of her animation, and learned books have been written
to vindicate him from having actually drawn the negative conclusion. Yet it is
hard to say that St. Thomas did not require an instant at least, after the
animation of Mary,
before her sanctification. His great difficulty appears to have arisen from the
doubt as to how she
could have been redeemed
if she had not sinned.
This difficulty he raised in no fewer than ten passages in his writings (see,
e.g., Summa III:27:2, ad
2). But while St. Thomas thus held back from the essential point of the doctrine, he himself laid
down the principles which, after they had been drawn together and worked out,
enabled other minds to
furnish the true
solution of this difficulty from his own premises.
In the thirteenth century the opposition
was largely due to a want of clear insight into the subject in dispute. The
word "conception" was used in different senses, which had not been
separated by careful definition.
If St. Thomas, St.
Bonaventure, and other theologians
had known the doctrine in the sense of the
definition of 1854,
they would have been its strongest defenders instead of being its opponents.
We may formulate the question discussed by
them in two propositions, both of which are against the sense of the dogma of 1854:
The theologians forgot that
between sanctification before infusion, and sanctification after
infusion, there was a medium: sanctification of the soul at the moment of
its infusion. To them the idea
seemed strange that what was subsequent in the order of nature could be
simultaneous in point of time.
Speculatively taken, the soul
must be created before
it can be infused and sanctified but in reality, the soul is created snd sanctified at
the very moment of its infusion into the body. Their principal difficulty was
the declaration of St.
Paul (Romans 5:12)
that all men have sinned
in Adam. The purpose
of this Pauline
declaration, however, is to insist on the need which all men have of redemption by Christ. Our Lady was no exception
to this rule. A second difficulty was the silence of the earlier Fathers. But
the divines of those times were distinguished not so much for their knowledge of the Fathers
or of history, as for their exercise of the power of reasoning. They read the Western Fathers more than
those of the Eastern
Church, who exhibit in far greater completeness the tradition of the
Immaculate Conception. And many works of the Fathers which had then been lost
sight of have since been brought to light.
The famous Duns Scotus (d. 1308) at
last (in III Sent., dist. iii, in both commentaries) laid the foundations of
the true doctrine so solidly and
dispelled the objections in a manner so satisfactory, that from that time onward the doctrine prevailed. He
showed that the sanctification after animation — sanctificatio post
animationem — demanded that it should follow in the order of nature (naturae)
not of time (temporis);
he removed the great difficulty of St. Thomas showing that, so far from being
excluded from redemption,
the Blessed Virgin
obtained of her Divine Son
the greatest of redemptions through the mystery of her
preservation from all sin.
He also brought forward, by way of illustration, the somewhat dangerous and doubtful argument of Eadmer (S. Anselm)
"decuit, potuit, ergo fecit."
From the time of Scotus not only did the doctrine become the
common opinion at the universities,
but the feast spread
widely to those countries where it had not been previously adopted. With the
exception of the Dominicans,
all or nearly all, of the religious orders took it up: The Franciscans at the general chapter at Pisa in 1263 adopted the
Feast of the Conception of Mary for the entire order; this, however, does not
mean that they professed at that time the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception. Following in the footsteps of their own Duns Scotus, the learned Petrus Aureolus and Franciscus de Mayronis
became the most fervent champions of the doctrine, although their
older teachers (St.
Bonaventure included) had been opposed to it. The controversy continued,
but the defenders of the opposing opinion were almost entirely confined to the
members of the Dominican
Order. In 1439 the dispute was brought before the Council of Basle where
the University of Paris,
formerly opposed to the doctrine,
proved to be its most
ardent advocate, asking for a dogmatical definition. The two referees at the
council were John of
Segovia and John Turrecremata (Torquemada). After it had been discussed for
the space of two years before that assemblage, the bishops declared the
Immaculate Conception to be a doctrine which was pious,
consonant with Catholic
worship, Catholic faith, right reason, and Holy Scripture; nor, said they, was
it henceforth allowable to preach or declare to the contrary (Mansi, XXXIX, 182). The
Fathers of the Council say that the Church of Rome was celebrating the feast. This is true only in a certain
sense. It was kept in a number of churches of Rome, especially in those
of the religious orders, but it was not received in the official calendar. As the council
at the time was not
ecumenical, it could not pronounce with authority. The memorandum of the Dominican Torquemada formed the
armoury for all attacks upon the doctrine made by St. Antoninus of Florence
(d. 1459), and by the Dominicans
Bandelli and Spina.
By a Decree of 28 February,
1476, Sixtus IV at
last adopted the feast
for the entire Latin
Church and granted an indulgence
to all who would assist at the Divine Offices of the solemnity (Denzinger, 734). The
Office adopted by Sixtus
IV was composed by Leonard de Nogarolis, whilst the Franciscans, since 1480,
used a very beautiful Office from the pen of Bernardine dei Busti (Sicut
Lilium), which was granted also to others (e.g. to Spain, 1761), and was chanted by the Franciscans up to the
second half of the nineteenth century. As the public acknowledgment of the feast of Sixtus IV did not prove sufficient to
appease the conflict, he published in 1483 a constitution in which he punished
with excommunication all
those of either opinion who charged the opposite opinion with heresy (Grave nimis, 4
Sept., 1483; Denzinger,
735). In 1546 the Council
of Trent, when the question was touched upon, declared that "it was
not the intention of
this Holy Synod to
include in the decree
which concerns original
sin the Blessed and
Immaculate Virgin Mary Mother of God" (Sess. V, De peccato originali,
v, in Denzinger, 792).
Since, however, this decree
did not define the doctrine, the theological opponents of
the mystery, though
more and more reduced in numbers, did not yield. St. Pius V not only
condemned proposition 73 of Baius
that "no one but Christ
was without original sin,
and that therefore the Blessed
Virgin had died because of the sin contracted in Adam, and had endured afilictions
in this life, like the rest of the just, as punishment of actual and original sin" (Denzinger, 1073) but he
also issued a constitution in which he forbade all public discussion of the
subject. Finally he inserted a new and simplified Office of the Conception in
the liturgical books
("Super speculam", Dec., 1570; "Superni omnipotentis",
March, 1571; "Bullarium Marianum", pp. 72, 75).
Whilst these disputes went on, the great universities and almost
all the great orders had become so many bulwarks for the defense of the dogma. In 1497 the University of Paris decreed that henceforward
no one should be admitted a member of the university, who did not swear that he
would do the utmost to defend and assert the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Toulouse followed the
example; in Italy,
Bologna and Naples; in
the German Empire, Cologne, Maine, and Vienna; in Belgium, Louvain; in England before the Reformation. Oxford and Cambridge; in Spain Salamanca, Toledo, Seville, and Valencia; in
Portugal, Coimbra and Evora; in America, Mexico
and Lima. The Friars Minor confirmed in
1621 the election of the Immaculate
Mother as patron
of the order, and bound themselves by oath to teach the mystery in public and in
private. The Dominicans,
however, were under special obligation
to follow the doctrines
of St. Thomas, and the common conclusion was that St. Thomas was opposed to the
Immaculate Conception. Therefore the Dominicans asserted that
the doctrine was an error against faith (John of Montesono, 1373);
although they adopted the feast,
they termed it persistently "Sanctificatio B.M.V." not
"Conceptio", until in 1622 Gregory XV abolished the
term "sanctificatio". Paul V (1617) decreed that no one
should dare to teach publicly that Mary was conceived in original sin, and Gregory XV (1622) imposed
absolute silence (in
scriptis et sermonibus etiam privatis) upon the adversaries of the doctrine until the Holy See should define the question. To
put an end to all further cavilling, Alexander VII promulgated on 8 December
1661, the famous constitution "Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum",
defining the true
sense of the word conceptio, and forbidding all further discussion
against the common and pious sentiment of the Church. He declared that
the immunity of Mary
from original sin in
the first moment of the creation
of her soul and its
infusion into the body was the object of the feast (Densinger, 1100).
Explicit
universal acceptance
Since the time of Alexander VII, long
before the final definition,
there was no doubt on
the part of theologians
that the privilege was amongst the truths revealed by God. Wherefore Pius IX, surrounded by a
splendid throng of cardinals
and bishops, 8
December 1854, promulgated
the dogma. A new
Office was prescribed for the entire Latin Church by Pius IX (25 December,
1863), by which decree
all the other Offices
in use were abolished, including the old Office Sicut lilium of the Franciscans, and the
Office composed by Passaglia
(approved 2 Feb., 1849).
In 1904 the golden jubilee of the definition
of the dogma was
celebrated with great splendour (Pius X, Enc., 2 Feb.,
1904). Clement IX
added to the feast an octave for the dioceses within the
temporal possessions of the pope
(1667). Innocent XII (1693)
raised it to a double of the second class with an octave for the universal Church, which rank had
been already given to it in 1664 for Spain, in 1665 for Tuscany and Savoy, in 1667 for the Society of Jesus, the Hermits of St. Augustine,
etc., Clement XI decreed on 6 Dec., 1708,
that the feast should
be a holiday of obligation throughout the
entire Church. At last
Leo XIII, 30 Nov 1879,
raised the feast to a
double of the first class with a vigil, a dignity which
had long before been granted to Sicily (1739), to Spain (1760) and to the United States (1847). A Votive Office of the
Conception of Mary, which is now recited in almost the entire Latin Church on free
Saturdays, was granted first to the Benedictine nuns of St. Anne at Rome in 1603, to the Franciscans in 1609, to
the Conventuals in
1612, etc. The Syrian
and Chaldean Churches celebrate this feast with the Greeks on
9 December; in Armenia
it is one of the few immovable feasts of the year (9
December); the schismatic
Abyssinians and Copts keep it on 7 August
whilst they celebrate the Nativity
of Mary on 1 May; the Catholic
Copts, however, have
transferred the feast
to 10 December (Nativity,
10 September). The Eastern
Catholics have since
1854 changed the name of the feast in accordance with
the dogma to the
"Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary."
The Archdiocese of Palermo
solemnizes a Commemoration of the Immaculate Conception on 1 September to give
thanks for the preservation of the city on occasion of the earthquake, 1
September, 1726. A similar commemoration
is held on 14 January at Catania
(earthquake, 11 Jan., 1693); and by the Oblate Fathers on 17 Feb., because
their rule was approved 17 Feb., 1826. Between 20 September 1839, and 7 May
1847, the privilege of
adding to the Litany of
Loretto the invocation, "Queen conceived without original sin", had
been granted to 300 dioceses
and religious communities. The Immaculate Conception was declared on 8
November, 1760, principal patron
of all the possessions of the crown of Spain, including those in
America. The decree of
the First Council of
Baltimore (1846) electing Mary in her Immaculate
Conception principal Patron
of the United States,
was confirmed on 7 February, 1847.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm
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