«MAGNIFICAT». — Canticle of praise to God uttered by the Virgin Mary during her visit to Elisabeth (v.), who, inspired, had greeted her as the mother of God (Lk. 1:46–55). Grateful 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 peoples would call her blessed, accomplishing great wonders in her (vv. 46–50); because he casts down the proud rich, raises up and satisfies the hungry poor (vv. 51–53); because he protects Israel, keeping the promises made to Abraham and to his descendants (v. 54 ff).
In this hymn there resound echoes of the canticle of Anna (I Sam. 2) and of several psalms, with which devout Israelites used to express their religious sentiments. Such echoes, in the spirit of the Virgin, are fused into a marvelous unity with allusions to the wonders accomplished in the history of Israel and praises for those begun with the Incarnation.
The six aorists in vv. 51–53 (rendered by the Vulgate with the perfects fecit, dispersit, deposuit, exaltavit, implevit, dimisit), according to some, refer to historical events of the past; according to others, they are gnomic (valid for all times), or prophetic (concerning the future), or inchoative (referring to the benefits that God has begun to accomplish).
The entire context of the M. reflects the sentiments of the Virgin on that occasion. S. Luke may have drawn the canticle either from the author herself or from the Semitic source revealed in the style of his first two chapters. The poetic parallelism and other features confirm the Semitic origin of the M.
Some, with A. Harnack and A. Loisy, claimed that the M. was the work of Elisabeth. But textual criticism demonstrates that only three codices of the ancient Latin version of the Gospels (a, b, l*) and some Latin codices of the works of s. Irenaeus and Origen, as well as some testimony from Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana (in Dacia, fifth century), attribute the M. to Elisabeth. All the other witnesses to the text (Greek and in other versions) favor Mary.
The Pontifical Biblical Commission, on 26 June 1912, summarizing the discussion, declared that «the extremely scant and singular documents in which the M. is attributed to Elisabeth cannot in any way prevail against the unanimous testimony of almost all the codices, both of the original text and of the versions, nor against the interpretation absolutely required 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 codices a, b, l* of the ancient Latin version, is explained by some through interpreting Elisabeth as a dative. This word, introduced as a gloss by some copyist (Et ait Maria Elisabeth, «and Mary said to Elisabeth»), 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, and in the Byzantine and Antiochene rites at Matins.
Pietro De Ambroggi