THE AVE MARIA IN ART AND LETTERS: BY DR LUKY WHITTLE

                   

                     THE AVE MARIA IN ART AND LETTERS

On 25 March, a gestation term before Christmas day, the Catholic Church celebrates the annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary of the incarnation of her divine Son.

In the words of St Luke, Mary was greeted by the Archangel Gabriel in the words: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”  In Latin the words translate to “Ave, gratia plena”.  Early Christians added the names of Jesus and Mary to the greeting in which they added the salutation of her pregnant elderly cousin Elizabeth: “Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the Fruit of Thy womb.” The greeting is concluded in the words: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.” 

For centuries the Ave Maria formed part of the Christian’s daily prayer.  We find Chaucer early in the second millennium informing that heavenly favours are available by the simple expedient of the recitation of an “Ave Marie or tweye” (a couple of Hail Marys). In Life magazine’s Christmas edition in 1995, Robert Sullivan estimated the number of Hail Marys recited daily at two billion (a billion or tweye) – although, of course, no scientific way of quantifying prayer exists, as many of our prayers are sent up in private.  

The cult of the Blessed Virgin may now be entering a hitherto unsuspected dimension.  On 20 December 2003 “The Economist” traced alleged links in the veneration of Mary between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the 20 December 2003 the writer named the thousands of lines of “subtle and expressive religious poetry addressed to Mary, the Mother of Jesus” as one of the great cultural achievements of the Christian era.   England was no exception.  In Anglo-Saxon or Old English, spoken in England from about 700 AD until about the first century of the second millennium, we find references to Mary in the so-called Christ poems, ascribed to the pen of Cynewulf, a ninth-century writer probably resident in Mercia, the West-Midland of England of the early ninth century. 

In Christ I – the Advent Lyrics a description of Mary’s virginity is given in the following lines, as heart-stirring as they are simple:

The woman was young,

A virgin free from sin,

Whom he chose to be his mother

It came to pass without man’s embrace

So that for the sake of the child’s birth the bride became pregnant.

No woman’s reward, before nor since in the world, occurred in this way

It was kept secret.  God’s mystery.

Paintings of the Annunciation abound, particularly in the works of the old masters.  One widely known one housed in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is Sandro Botticelli’s masterpiece painted in 1489 and 1490.  It shows the Blessed Virgin kneeling beside a wooden lectern.  She appears to be looking inward rather than outward, her hands at once beckoning and resisting Gabriel who kneels before her, a huge St Joseph’s lily in his hand.  The angel has wings which could belong to him or perhaps symbolise a hovering Holy Spirit, awaiting Mary’s fiat: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  Let it be done unto me according to thy word.” (Lk 1:38). 

The Irish-born playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) could have been referring to the  Botticelli picture  when he concluded his poem “Ave Maria, gratia plena” in these words:

            “With wondering eyes and heart I stand

            before this supreme mystery of Love:

            some kneeling girl with passionless pale face,

            an angel with a lily in his hand,

            and over both the white wings of a Dove.

In medieval poetry which teems with poetry about the mystery of the Annunciation we often encounter the Eva-Ave theme.  Eve (Latin: Eva), the earth mother and Adam broke faith with God.  Their innocence was reclaimed by the immaculate Virgin Mary and her Divine Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  During the Reformation the Douai-trained Jesuit priest Robert Southwell (1561-1595) who during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I was beheaded in the Tower of London for his Catholic faith, wrote:

            Spell Eva back and Ave shall you find

            The first began, the last reversed our harms

            An Angel’s witching words did Eva blind

            An Angel’s Ave disenchants the charms

            Death first by woman’s weakness entered in

            In woman’s virtue life does now begin.

Using the same inspiration The born Catholic turned Anglican priest and metaphysical poet John Donne (1573-1631) calls Mary “Thy Maker’s maker and thy Father’s mother”.  A fellow metaphysical poet, the Protestant George Herbert, wrote the heart-stopping “Ana-(Mary/Army)gram,” which consists of only two lines.

            How well her name an Army doth present

            In whom the Lord of Hosts did pitch his tent.

With the rise of the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century, the composition of English Marian poetry which had abounded before the Reformation began to come back into its own.  Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), an Anglican turned Catholic priest is arguably the major exponent of Marian poetry during this century, although his works were only introduced to the public at large after the start of the twentieth century.  He took his inspiration from medieval religious lyrics, resuscitating sprung rhythm, a poetic conceit last used in the work “Piers Plowman” in the fourteenth century.  In his organic poetry he compares the Blessed Virgin “to the air we breathe”, saying:

She, wild web, wondrous robe

Mantles the guilty globe,

Since God has let dispense

Her prayers his providence:

Nay, more than almoner,

The sweet alms’ self is her

And men are meant to share

Her life as life is air.”

The sheer volume of Annunciation art and poetry is a sign that though it passes without pomp and circumstance, the annual feast of the Annunciation represents a landmark in the  faith of all Christians.  It marks the day when Mary was requested to allow herself to be used as a bridge between God and the human race.  In reply to Gabriel’s invitation she joyfully proclaimed: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  Let it be it done unto me according to thy word.” 

It is Mary’s joyous obedience to God’s redemptive plan which is the reason why  Christians throughout the ages have turned to her in good times and in bad for intercession with the Lord.  And as in Chaucer’s time and in the ten centuries before it we still do so using the prayer beginning with the Angelic salutation: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”

Image with thanks to Freepik AI generated content by CN Whittle