Presentation of Mary, Saint, Feast of the

PRESENTATION OF MARY, Saint, Feast of the. - The feast of the P. is one of the minor Marian feasts of the universal Church and is celebrated with double major rite on Nov. 21. The only liturgical text proper to the Office and Mass is the Oremus.

The direct object of the feast is an event in the life of the Madonna, when, at the age of only three years, she is said to have been led by her parents to Jerusalem, to be offered to the Lord in the Temple, where she is said to have remained until the age of 12, devoted solely to piety and to the service of the sanctuary. This fact, however, is not contained in the Gospels, but is one of the many pious inventions of the apocrypha. It appears for the first time, still with scant detail, in the so-called Protoevangelium of James (2nd-3rd century), developed later and dramatized in various other apocryphal gospels of the infancy of the Lord (v. G. Bonaccorsi, Vangeli apocrifi, I, Florence 1948, pp. 72-73 and passim). This narrative found a warm reception among the people and there the imagination of artists was kindled, who in the depiction of the scene found from antiquity a vast field of representations (v. below).

The liturgical celebration appears, however, relatively

PRESENTATION OF MARY, FEAST OF THE

late. It seems that its beginnings must be sought in Jerusalem. The church of St. Mary the New, built in the center of the city by Justinian I in 543, seems to have intended to localize the event; from the anniversary of the dedication of this church, Nov. 21, the true feast of the P. would later have been born. In the times of the Crusaders the memory of this fact passed to the Templum Domini, that is, to the mosque of 'Omar, on the temple esplanade, which served as a Catholic church from 1099 to 1187. Be that as it may, the feast of the P. is found in all the Eastern calendars, always on the date indicated (v. Nilles, Kalendarium manuale utriusque Ecclesiae, I, II, Innsbruck 1898, v. indexes). In 1143 Manuel Comnenus made the P. a feast day.

The West knew the feast through various Eastern influences and by many routes. It appears in isolation as early as the 10th and 12th centuries in two Greek lectionaries, manuscripts of Cesena (Plut. XXVII, cod. IV, 10th century; Plut. XXIX, cod. II, 12th century; H. Leclercq, Cétène, in DACL, II, 3313), in an English calendar of the 12th century at Winchester where it is called "oblatio s. Mariae in templo cum esset trium annorum" (R. T. Hampson, Calendaria medii aevi, London 1841, 432, 445), and in the calendar of a Hungarian sacramentary of 1200, preserved in Budapest (National Museum, Vyelvemlekek; 1) where it appears as "rappresentatio s. Mariae", and in another Hungarian calendar (Budapest, National Museum F. 94), as "contestatio Mariae Virginis". It began to become universal in 1372. In that year the ambassador to Cyprus, Philippe de Mazières, induced Charles V of France to celebrate the feast, with the assent of Gregory XI, in the church of the Friars Minor at Avignon, where the pontifical Curia then resided. The King invited the country to follow the example, the Pope inserted it into the calendar of the Curia and shortly thereafter it penetrated the whole Western Church. In 1391 the Carmelites adopted it, in 1474 the Carthusians; Pius II and Sixtus IV greatly favored its diffusion: in 1472 it was granted to Duke William of Saxony, from where it passed to Mainz and Trier. Pius IV introduced it into the Roman Breviary; but St. Pius V suppressed it because it was apocryphal. Philip II of Spain, however, obtained from Gregory XIII the right to continue celebrating it in his realms, and shortly afterward Sixtus V, urged on also by Fr. Francesco Turriani S.J., prescribed it anew for the universal Church (brief: Intemeratae Matris Dei Mariae, Sept. 1, 1585) with double rite and with the formulary of the feast of the Nativity of Mary, replacing the word "nativitas" with "praesentatio". Thus the various medieval formularies disappeared, with texts at times bold, but often poetic. Finally Clement VIII, on the occasion of the revision of the Missal (1602), raising the rite to double major, reduced the formulary to its present state. When, under Benedict XIV, a reform of the Breviary and Missal was discussed, the feast of the P. ran the risk of being eliminated once again; but the Pope died before he could carry his designs to completion. Even in recent times voices have been raised from time to time demanding its suppression because it is apocryphal; others, on the other hand, would wish to preserve it, not as a celebration of the "presentation of the three-year-old Mary", but in deference to the more general and theologically safe concept of the "oblatio" or "consecratio" of the Most Holy Virgin to God, by which she, as no other human creature, was totally dedicated to the Lord.

Giuseppe Löw

ICONOGRAPHY

The oldest known depictions in art of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple date back to the 11th century. A very early example of these is found among the miniatures of oriental taste in the book of the Osselle by the monk Jacobo, a manuscript preserved in the National Library in Paris (miniature reproduced by A. Venturi in La Madone [v. bibl.], p. 108).

Fourteenth-century Florentine painting contributed extensively to the establishment of the illustrative concept of the Presentation of the Virgin in compositions where, among many figures, the Virgin Mary as a young girl is seen, accompanied by St. Joachim and St. Anne, ascending a staircase leading to a temple and received there by a priest. Only Mary stands on the staircase; her parents remain lower down, at a certain respectful distance. To illustrate the gradual development of the growing splendor of this representation, one may note three distinguished frescoes belonging to three successive generations of the fourteenth-century Florentine school: namely that of Giotto, painted in 1305 in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua; that of Taddeo Gaddi, painted in 1335 in the Baroncelli Chapel at S. Croce in Florence; and that of Giovanni da Milano, executed around 1345 in the Rinuccini Chapel, which forms part of the sacristy of the same church in Florence. According to the same illustrative concept, though much abbreviated and reduced in scale, the Presentation was painted by Bernardo Daddi among the Stories of the Virgin that adorn the predella of the Uffizi altarpiece. Orcagna likewise depicted the Presentation of the Virgin at the same time in a much more synthetic manner, as shown by a carved marble panel in the tabernacle of Orsanmichele, executed between 1349 and 1350, where the figures of the young Mary and the priests are seen on a staircase in the center, and at the sides, symmetrically arranged, the parents and two angels.

The figurative concept of the Presentation of the Virgin, thus established in the late Middle Ages, varies little in the fifteenth century, as can be seen in the fresco painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Cappella Maggiore of S. Maria Novella in Florence.

Notable depictions of the Presentation of the Virgin were left by sixteenth-century Venetian painting; among them are remembered, in chronological order, those of Carpaccio (Milan, Brera) and of Cima da Conegliano (Dresden, Gallery), the other famous one by Titian, painted between 1534 and 1538 (Venice, Accademia), and the slightly later one by Tintoretto (Venice, church of S. Maria dell'Orto).

A grand depiction of the Presentation of the Virgin, conceived according to the Baroque taste, was painted in 1642 by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli for the Vatican Basilica. The original of this altarpiece, later reproduced in mosaic, was brought in the mid-eighteenth century to the church of S. Maria degli Angeli in Rome, where it is still preserved. - See plate CXXXIII.

Witold Wehr