Nativity of Mary, Saint

NATIVITY OF MARY MOST HOLY. - One of the major feasts of Our Lady, celebrated on September 8; a double of the second class, with a simple octave.

I. LITURGY

The reason why the feast of the Nativity of Mary was set on September 8 is completely unknown. Its origin, like that of all the major Marian feasts, lies in the East, probably in Palestine and perhaps in Jerusalem.

The birth and life of the Madonna, passed over by the Gospels, greatly captivated the people instead; to fill this gap, various apocrypha soon arose, among which the foremost,

NATIVITY OF MARY

both in time and in importance, is the so-called Protoevangelium of St. James, certainly from the end of the 2nd century. But in the time of St. Augustine there certainly did not yet exist a particular liturgical feast (Sermo 292 de Sanctis: PL 38, 1320). Shortly afterward, however, that is, from the time when, following the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), the figure of the "Deipara" appeared before the Church in all her greatness, the feast of her birth came too, along with the other major Marian feasts. The wording of the Hieronymian Martyrology: "Nativitas s. Mariae, Matris Dei" clearly betrays the profound theological reason for this celebration. Many patristic sermons, Eastern ones first of all, extol the Nativity of Mary (though not all are authentic); thus St. Proclus of Jerusalem (d. 447: PG 65, 680 ff.); and Romanos the Melodist, among the greatest Byzantine liturgical poets (ca. 560), described it in verse according to the Protoevangelium of James (J. B. Pitra, Analecta sacra, I, Venice 1876). For St. Andrew of Crete (740) the feast of the Madonna's birth is by then an ancient tradition (see the 4 sermons for the said feast: PG 97, 805-82).

In Rome the feast penetrated around the middle of the 7th century, together with the feasts of the Purification, Annunciation and Assumption of Mary, through the work of the Eastern monks who at that time emigrated en masse from the Eastern regions that had fallen under the Mohammedan yoke. Sergius

I (687-701) established that the said Marian feasts should be distinguished by a solemn procession that set out from the ancient Curia Senatus, which had become S. Adriano, to end at S. Maria Maggiore (Lib. Pont., I, p. 376). From the 7th century the feast of the Nativity of Mary also appears in many liturgical books (thus in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, in the Capitularia Evangeliorum, in various lectionaries, etc.). As the Gospel pericope the story of the Visitation generally served (Lk 1:39-47), later replaced by the genealogy of Mt 1:1-16. The lection varied greatly until Pius V. The spread of the feast was slow and uneven. It entered the martyrologies early: Bede refers to it in the Martyr. poeticum and in the historical one (PL 94, 605; 1037), Ado in the Libellus de festivitatibus ss. Apostolorum (PL 123, 201-202), Usuard in his Martyrology, the basis of the Roman one (Acta SS. Junii, VI, Antwerp 1715, p. 486). In can. 20 of the Council of Reims, under Sonnatius (630), the Nativity of Mary is prescribed as a holy day (Mansi, X, p. 599), and likewise in the Synod of Riesbach-Frisinga (791, can. 10; Hefele-Leclercq, III, p. 1107); while it is missing from the list of holy days of St. Boniface, and from the great reform Council of Mainz of 813. Amalarius too, in his numerous writings, makes no mention of it. In London a Synod was held on this feast in 948. Be that as it may, from the 10th-11th century the feast of the Nativity of Mary is general. It suffices to recall the principal liturgists: G. Durand, Rationale Div. Officiorum, VII, 28; G. Beleth, Div. Officiorum eorundem rationum brevis explicatio, 149; Sicard, Mitrale, IX, 43. During the difficult Conclave after the death of Gregory IX (1241) the cardinals bound themselves, if the conclave ended well, to press the new Pope to institute the octave of the feast of the Nativity of Mary. When the elect, Celestine IV, died after only 18 days, his successor, Innocent IV, with the approval of the General Council of Lyon (1245) decreed the said octave, celebrated, as Radulf of Rivo attests (De can. observantia, propos. 19, ed. C. Mohlberg, Münster 1915, p. 117), as a greater octave, that is, a full one. Gregory XI (1378) also instituted a vigil, with fasting, and even composed the Mass; but with his death it immediately fell into disuse.

In Rome the feast of the Nativity of Mary remained most solemn still in the middle of the 13th century (Ordo Rom. XI, by Benedict the canon: PL 78, 1052); indeed the solemn papal Mass was celebrated at S. Adriano; in the Ordo Rom. XIV it is among the feasts that exclude the conciotro (ibid., 1230); Peter Amelius (Ordo Rom. XV, chap. 126; ibid., 1344-45) also notes the vigil. But with the turbulent times of Avignon the papal celebration lapsed. Sixtus V, reorganizing the papal chapels, instituted one for September 8 in the church of S. Maria del Popolo, which lasted until his death (1590); Alexander VII (whose family had its burial chapel in that church) re-established it in 1666 after the cessation of the plague of 1665, and it was maintained until 1870. In the church of S. Maria in Via

On this day the fresh water of the well is distributed, in which, according to tradition, the image of the Madonna venerated there was found floating. It should be noted that the readings of the second nocturn, attributed in the Breviary to St. Augustine (Sermo 18 de Sanctis), are instead by the abbot Autpertus Ambrose (a. 787; cf. Enc. Catt., II, coll. 499-500). Pius X reduced the octave to a simple one; with the transfer of the feast of the Sorrows of Mary to Sept. 15, the eighth day is also practically eliminated.

Giuseppe Löw

II. ICONOGRAPHY

The earliest depictions of the Nativity of Mary known thus far date back to the 11th century; the oldest appears to be a miniature, datable to 1025, painted in a Greek codex of the Vatican Library (Vat. gr. 1613). The iconography of the Nativity of Mary appears in synoptic depictions of the entire life of the Madonna, presented in a series of consecutive scenes of the Marian story from the birth of the Virgin Mary to her assumption into Heaven, the entry into which is depicted with the Coronation. Such Marian synoptic representations appear in the art of the European West and multiply in the late Middle Ages. In the depictions of the scene two actions are usually seen brought together: the first is devoted to the account of the childbirth of St. Anne lying on a broad bed in a chamber; the second generally shows in the foreground the midwives gathered around the bed, intent on washing the newborn in a basin. One and the same iconographic type was adopted for the depictions of the birth of St. John the Baptist, often indistinguishable from those of the Madonna. Italian art, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, produced several very beautiful depictions of the nativity of the Most Holy Virgin. Among them are to be cited, for medieval art, the one composed in mosaic by P. Cavallini in S. Maria in Trastevere in Rome; the fresco by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua; the fresco by Taddeo Gaddi in the Baroncelli Chapel and the other by Giovanni da Milano in the sacristy of S. Croce in Florence; the panel sculpted by Orcagna in the tabernacle of Orsanmichele in Florence; the Birth of Mary frescoed in 1424 by Ottaviano Nelli in the Trinci Chapel of the palace of the same name in Foligno follows the fourteenth-century model. For Renaissance art, the very famous fifteenth-century depiction by Domenico Ghirlandaio, frescoed in 1488 in the main chapel of S. Maria Novella in Florence, is remembered. Fra' Filippo Lippi adorned the background of his Madonna with the Child Jesus, painted in a tondo, in Florence in the Pitti Palace, with the birth of Mary. Among the sixteenth-century depictions of the nativity of the Most Holy Virgin is to be cited the fresco by Andrea del Sarto in the cloister of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence. - See plate CXI.

Witold Wehr

III. THE GOSPEL OF THE NATIVITY OF MARY

A title that in many manuscripts designates the apocryphon which the first editor (Postel, d. 1581) published as the Protoevangelium of James (v.). In its oldest form it goes back to the 2nd century. A Latin reworking which is usually cited as Pseudo-Matthew also bears the title Book of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the Infancy of the Savior. In its first 17 chapters it depends on the Protoevangelium of James; in the rest it recounts the flight into Egypt and the life at Nazareth.

Later, in the Carolingian era, a new Latin reworking arose, more delicate and more discreet than the preceding one: it softens its incongruities, accepting only what Pseudo-Matthew has in common with the Protoevangelium of James. These writings had great influence on Eastern and Western art and liturgy. The feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple is owed to this apocryphon.

Pietro De Ambroggi