Alone of All Her Sex

Fülszöveg

She had no peer
Either in our first mother or in all women Who were to come. But alone of all her sex She pleased the Lord.
—Caelius Sedulius
The Virgin Mary's importance is universal, almost incalculable; her cult, one of the richest and most enduring our world has ever produced. Yet in the deepest sense, she herself has remained unknown, remote, and exalted— concealed from our understanding behind the beautiful masks of legend, doctrine, and iconography—her true nature an enigma. Now in this extraordinary book, at once a feat of scholarship and a literary achievement of great beauty, Marina Warner penetrates the many layers of Mariology to bring us something remarkable: a "biography" of the Virgin that reveals her in all her guises from antiquity to the present day, from human woman to Queen of Heaven.
Here is Mary's "life" as it has unfolded over the last 2,000 years, and her multiple personalities. Never condescending, never mocking the many "faces" of the Virgin as... Tovább

Fülszöveg

She had no peer
Either in our first mother or in all women Who were to come. But alone of all her sex She pleased the Lord.
—Caelius Sedulius
The Virgin Mary's importance is universal, almost incalculable; her cult, one of the richest and most enduring our world has ever produced. Yet in the deepest sense, she herself has remained unknown, remote, and exalted— concealed from our understanding behind the beautiful masks of legend, doctrine, and iconography—her true nature an enigma. Now in this extraordinary book, at once a feat of scholarship and a literary achievement of great beauty, Marina Warner penetrates the many layers of Mariology to bring us something remarkable: a "biography" of the Virgin that reveals her in all her guises from antiquity to the present day, from human woman to Queen of Heaven.
Here is Mary's "life" as it has unfolded over the last 2,000 years, and her multiple personalities. Never condescending, never mocking the many "faces" of the Virgin as either contradictory nonsense or ignorant superstition, Marina Warner makes us understand why Mary is a supremely important figure, and what she really is: a dynamic historic entity both deliberately created by the Church to meet its own needs, and at the same time instinctively formed by simple human needs a magic mirror both sacred and profane, reflecting many people in many ages, and the desires, fears, and beliefs by which they lived and died. All is lovingly, accessibly detailed— historically, mythologically, psychologically, artistically —and embellished with a wealth of reproductions of exquisite paintings, sculpture, icons, and poems that illustrate man's passionate feelings about the Virgin in every century.
Taking each new avatar of Mary at the zenith of its power, Marina Warner works backwards and forwards in time, showing the ideas and emotions that contributed to its genesis and lingered on in the tiredness of old age, superseded but never effaced:
The Biblical Mary, the real-life woman of the Christmas Story (a curiously cryptic tale out of the gospels of Matthew and Luke that has been embroidered enchant-ingly by western fantasy, but that on examination evaporates almost entirely, leaving something very different
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in its place) The Mary of the Apocryphal Book of James, banned from the Bible, who fuses antiquity's allegories of virgin-born gods and goddesses into something quite new Mary as Second Eve, redeemer of the world God cursed in Eden Mary, Queen of Heaven, emblem of a newly powerful Church Militant Mary, Bride of Christ Mary, Madonna and idealised mistress Mary as Mother.,. Mary as Mater Dolorosa, Our Lady of Sorrows The Other Mary—Magdalene—Penitent Whore Mary's own Immaculate Conception Mary as Intercessor Mary as Patron Saint in time of war
Mary as Comforter in the hour of our death____
Through the ever-changing nature of the Virgin, Marina Warner reveals to us not only the Holy Mother worshipped by millions of Catholics the world over, but the alchemy that has produced and shaped western civilisation's ultimate vision of ideal womanhood—sweetness, gentleness, goodness, humility, quiet acceptance, merciful compassion, and purity. Recognizing the very real beauty and power for good of Mary the Ideal Woman, she also acknowledges that this beautiful symbol is built upon pain and a bitter flaw: that for any woman to try to emulate her is to deny her own humanity, that to worship her virgin motherhood is to re-affirm the "wrongness" of sexual love, the degradation of childbirth, the irredeemable curse of original sin that all other women—and men —are born with.
Marina Warner was born in London in 1946. After graduating from Oxford University, she became a journalist, then Features Editor of Vogue from 1969 to 1972. During this period, she won the London Daily Telegraph Young Writer of the Year award, and wrote her first book, the highly acclaimed The Dragon Em-press: The Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi, Empress Dowager of China. She is currently at work on a novel, and a biography of Joan of Arc.
Illustrated with 8 pages of color and 24 pages of black-and-white photographs
Jacket painting: The Virgin Panel from The Wilton Diptych, National Gallery, London
Jacket design by Gun Larson
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