Presentation of Mary

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Mary to the Temple. It’s not a big feast in the Western Church, but I do find it interesting. Mary’s presentation mimic’s the presentation of Samuel and Jesus. It represents her dedication to God. The history of the feast is quite old, although it comes from a story of an apocryphal Gospel, is regarded as a useful, if ahistorical, story of Mary’s childhood.

The Protoevangelium of James is a non-canonical Gospel narrative written around 145 that includes the birth and childhood of Mary. It also supports the perpetual virginity of Mary. The book was condemned as inauthentic by Church councils and by Pope Innocent I. It seems to be regarded as one of many infancy Gospels that were written in the second century as Christians wanted more details about the life of Jesus.

In the book, Anne, Mary’s mother, is likened to Hannah—a devout, barren women who dedicates her child to God. Mary’s parents present her to the temple at age 3, where she is raised until her betrothal to Joseph.

The idea of consecrated temple virgins is not a concept that was widely, if at all, practiced in Judaism at the time. However, there are verses in 1 Samuel and 2 Maccabees that suggest there were such women. It seems to be a mix of a Jewish custom of dedicating firstborn sons to God and Roman customs of temple virgins.

The celebration of the Presentation of Mary began with the celebration of the dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary the New in Jerusalem in 543. It is one of the 12 Great Feasts in the Eastern Church (the Orthodox, who have already begun the Nativity Fast, lessen the fast today). It was added to the Western calendar in 1584.

While the Church regards the Protoevangelium of James as apocryphal, she views the story of Mary’s presentation has a sign of her lifelong fidelity to God. The day is also Pro Orantibus Day, a day of prayer for cloistered communities, who dedicate their lives to God “in prayer, silence, and concealment.” 

St. Gertrude the Great

St. Gertrude the Great was born on Epiphany, 1256 in what is now Germany. She was raised in a monastery, where she received a thorough education. At 25, she began to have visions. She devoted herself to prayer and her writings focused more on spiritual than academic matter.

She wrote a large portion of A Herald of Divine Love (other parts written by her peers). She also wrote her own Spiritual Exercises. It included prayers for various liturgies and feast days throughout the year. St. Francis de Sales used her prayers, and they have been popular throughout Europe for centuries.

She is one of the earliest known devotees to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She had a vision of Christ’s heart, pouring forth like a redemptive fountain from the wound in his side.

One of her most popular prayers is for those in purgatory. She is one of few saints (and to my knowledge the only women) with the title “Great.” She died in 1302. Her feast day is November 16. 

500: Common Places and Confession

Introduction to 500 series

Philip Melanchthon was an academic who Luther recruited to the University of Wittenberg to teach Greek. He became critical of the traditional, scholastic theology being taught in universities at the time. In 1519 he began lecturing on the Gospel of Matthew and Paul’s letters. He was transferred to the theology department.

He defended Luther’s positions on the papacy while Luther was at Wartburg Castle. In 1521 he published Loci Communes. It outlines his thoughts on Christian doctrine from the Epistle to the Romans. Luther said, “Next to Holy Scripture, there is no better book.” It is considered the first book of Lutheran systematic theology and grandfathered Protestant scholasticism.

But perhaps his strongest influence was in the Augsburg Confession, written in 1530, outlining the doctrine of the Protestant Reformation. Emperor Charles V had called on the German princes to submit their religious convictions in an effort to establish political unity in the empire and rally a united support against Turkish invasion. The document contains 21 theses of Lutheran belief and 7 antitheses against the Church.

The Lutheran princes agreed to a military alliance with Charles V; any city or state that gave official assent to the Augsburg Confession could be admitted into the alliance. It solidified Protestant theology as a political player in Europe. The English translation of the Confession was read and assented to by King Henry VIII of England. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church were strongly influenced by the Confession.  In 1540, Melanchthon revised the Confession; the revised edition, called the Variata, was signed by John Calvin. Most Lutherans held to the “unaltered” edition.

The Augsburg Confession and the league did not truly settle the tension between Charles V and the Lutheran princes. The Schmalkaldic War took place 1546-1547. In September 1555, Charles V and the Schmalkaldic League (signers of the Confession) signed the Peace of Augsburg. The treaty legally divided the Holy Roman Empire and established cuius region, eius religio (“whose realm, his religion”) This allowed rulers to choose Lutheranism or Catholicism as their state religion. Citizens who held different beliefs were given a grace period to freely emigrate to a state holding to the other religion. There were a few mixed cities, where Lutheranism had been practiced since the 1520s but the city’s ruler was Catholic; certain princes and knights were given exemptions. 

For the most part, the Augsburg Confession was a success of modern negotiating. It balanced the rights of Catholic and Lutheran rulers and also considered the welfare of the subjects under them. However, it only recognized one Protestant doctrine, Lutheranism; thus, other Protestant sects that were rising still had no political power. But that would soon be challenged as well.

500: The Peasants Protest Too

Introduction to 500 series

Luther’s writings were being spread rapidly throughout literate Europe and gaining followers among academics and German nobles. At the same time, his views were being spread orally among the illiterate. They reached rural areas where communities already had loose catechesis and heretical ideas had nominally been practiced for years (see the result of the Plague). In 1521, three men later called the “Zwickau Prophets” arrived in Wittenberg. They preached that their authority came from the Holy Spirit, not Scripture or the Church. They rejected infant baptism and warned of a coming apocalypse.

Although their views differed wildly from Luther’s, they gained favor with some of Luther’s peers, including Andreas Karlstadt. On Christmas Day 1521, Karlstadt celebrated his first “communion service” in which he wore secular clothes, used German instead of Latin, rejected confession as a prerequisite for communion, and purged all references of sacrifice from the Mass. Luther eventually returned to Wittenberg in order to preach against the “fanatics.”

Karlstadt continued to grow more radical; he got rid of images and music in churches, got married, and rejected infant baptism. He denied the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Politically, the Zwickau Prophets preached an ideal Christian commonwealth, with commodities shared and all men held equal. These ideas were gaining traction among German peasants, who revolted against the aristocracy in the German Peasants’ War of 1524-1525. While all the complex causes and influences in the war are still subject to debate, I think it is clear that the individualism and anti-institutionalism expressed in the growing new religious movements inspired people to seek political change, and vice versa. If the Church is oppressive, then isn’t the king oppressive too? If each man is equal in political power, then isn’t his Biblical interpretations equal too? In both cases, the rural populace wants to be left alone and not told what to do.

Variations of this sort of religious movement popped up across Germany, Switzerland, Moravia, and the Low Countries. There are various pastors from the late 1520s and early 1530s who developed somewhat similar iconoclastic, credo-baptist, pacifist doctrines. The Swiss Brethren were one of the larger of these groups. In 1527 the Swiss Brethren published a confession of faith outline among other things adult-only baptism, symbolic Lord’s Supper, separation from worldly matters, and nonviolence. The belief that baptism of infants was invalid was a large competent of this group, and thus they begin “re-baptizing” adults, earning the name “Anabaptist” (“to baptize again”). Of course, other Christian groups did not recognize these second baptisms as valid. One of these leaders, Felix Manz, was executed by Protestants by way of drowning—a signal of their disapproval of “re-baptisms.”

I think the Anabaptist beginnings share a lot in common with the Awakenings that would spring up over the centuries and with the Pentecostal movement in the early twentieth century. The people outside of the academic circles and noble elites did not care much about complicated doctrines or edicts. They felt religion, and the zeitgeist valued appeals of individual emotion and rejection of foreign institutions.

500: Protesters become Protestant

Introduction to 500 series

Although Charles V had banned Luther’s writings throughout the Holy Roman Empire, Lutheranism was still gaining followers, and German princes were not enforcing the bans. At the Diet of Speyer in 1526, the princes officially professed their Lutheran faith. With Turkish invasion threatening, the empire could not risk alienating the heretical princes. It was decided that the matter of religion would be settled at a later time, and that in the interim, the princes should “rule, and believe as it may hope and trust to answer before God and his imperial Majesty.” While Charles V had no intention of granting religious freedom to Lutherans, (Charles V did not attend the diet, nor did he sign or oppose the edict from it), the princes took this vague instruction to “follow their conscience” and continue their Lutheran reforms, now with a claim of political credibility.

In 1529, there was another Diet of Speyer, again to deal with the issues of Turkish invasion and rising religious rebellion. The Catholic representatives sought to clarify that the princes could not choose what religious reforms took place. Ferdinand (later Ferdinand I), representing Charles V, condemned the princes’ interpretation and reiterated that the Holy Roman Empire was Catholic. This diet forbade any reforms on the threat of imperial ban and upheld the Edict of Worms. It also clarified that fringe reform movements, like Zwinglianism and Anabaptism, could be punished by death.

The Lutheran representatives, seeing their movement delegitimized, entered a legal protest on April 25, 1529. Six princes and 14 representatives of Imperial Free Cities protested the measures of the Diet of Speyer which they saw as contrary to their beliefs and to the decisions made at the first Diet of Speyer. They asked for a judgment overturning the majority decision of the diet. From this protest came the word “Protestant.” 

Protestantism now commonly refers to all Western Christian branches that are not Catholic or Orthodox. The branches of Protestantism are so varied, it seemed pointless at times to put them under a single term. Yet they all still branch from splitting from the Catholic Church. They may not formally protest the Diet of Speyer, but they are still sects that arose from protest.  

The Three Churches at Allhallowstide

All Saints and All Souls seem so similar; one is about the souls now in heaven and one is about souls who will hopefully make it there. They are mushed together in Allhallowstide. However, they are quite separate. For the Church Militant, we are to recognize the differences between the Church Triumphant and the Church Suffering and respond accordingly.

All Saints is a joyous feast, honoring the canonized saints whose names we know but also all the other saints, the non-canonized, the forgotten. They too have finished the race and share in God’s glory. They too want us to join them and offer their prayers for us. So All Saints is a time for us to acknowledge them, and to ask them for our prayers.

All Souls is not a feast. The liturgical color for the day is actually black, for while we don purple in times of penance for our own souls, black is the color of mourning for others. The Church Suffering is just that—suffering. But it is a purifying pain. They need our prayers. We pray for God’s mercy on them. We hope that in turn, when they reach the beatific vision, that they will pray for us. So on All Souls we mourn our losses, remember our passed loved ones, and pray for them.

Together the days really demonstrate the entire Church—Triumphant, Suffering, and Militant—working together and praying for one another. Death is not an end. We are the victors.