«MAGNIFICAT». — The canticle of praise to God uttered by the Virgin ELISABETTA (v.), who, inspired, had greeted her as Mother of God (Lk. 1:46–55). Filled with gratitude for the mystery of the Incarnation accomplished in her, Mary raises praises to the Lord because He deigned to favor His humble handmaid, so that all generations would call her blessed, accomplishing great wonders in her (vv. 46–50); because He casts down the proud rich, exalts and satisfies the hungry poor (vv. 51–53); and because He protects Israel, keeping the promises made to Abraham and his descendants (vv. 54–55).
In this hymn, echoes of Hannah’s canticle (1 Sam. 2) and of several psalms resound, with which devout Israelites were accustomed to express their religious sentiments. These echoes, in the spirit of the Virgin, merge in wondrous unity with allusions to the wonders accomplished in the history of Israel and praises for those begun with the Incarnation.
The six verbs in vv. 51–53 (rendered in the Vulgate by the perfect tenses *fecit, dispersit, deposuit, exaltavit, implevit, dimisit*) are, according to some, references to past historical events; according to others, they are gnomic (valid for all times), prophetic (concerning the future), or hortatory (for the benefits that God has begun to accomplish).
The entire context of the M. reflects the sentiments of the Virgin on that occasion. St. Luke may have drawn the canticle either from the Virgin herself or from the Semitic source revealed in the style of the first two chapters of his Gospel. The poetic parallelism and other peculiarities confirm the Semitic origin of the M.
Some, with A. Harnack and A. Loisy, have preferred to attribute the M. to Elizabeth. But textual criticism shows that only three manuscripts of the ancient Latin version of the Gospels (a, b, 1) and a few Latin codices of the works of St. Irenaeus and Origen, as well as some testimony from Nicetas, Bishop of Remesiana (in Dacia, 4th c.), attribute the M. to Elizabeth. All other witnesses to the text (Greek and other versions) favor Mary.
The Pontifical Biblical Commission, on June 26, 1912, summarizing the discussion, declared that «the extremely scarce and singular documents in which the M. is attributed to Elizabeth cannot in any way prevail against the concrete testimony of nearly all the manuscripts, both of the original text and of the versions, nor against the interpretation absolutely demanded by the context, the spirit of the Virgin herself, and the constant tradition of the Church» (Denz.-U., 2158).
The origin of the strange reading *«Et ait Elisabeth»* (in Lk. 1:46) in the codices a, b, 1 of the Old Latin is explained by some as a dative interpretation of *Elisabeth*. This word, introduced as a gloss by some copyist (*Et ait Maria Elisabeth*, «and Mary said to Elizabeth»), would have supplanted *Maria* under the pen of a later copyist. Others propose different hypotheses.
In the Latin rites, the M. is sung (or recited) at Vespers; in the Byzantine and ancient Roman rites, it is sung at Matins.
Pietro De Ambroggi