Ott acknowledges for the first three centuries, the “veneration” of Mary was connected with the veneration of Christ. It is in the fourth century, and especially after Ephesus (431), that the formal veneration of Mary is found. “For the first three centuries, the “veneration” of Mary was intimately connected with the veneration of Christ. From the 4th c onwards we find a formal veneration of Mary herself.”
Llywelyn notes: Mary’s unparalleled stature as a figure to whom the faithful sought recourse grew through the slow accumulation of a complex matrix that included theological speculation, public and private worship, legendary narratives, accounts of miracles, homilies and hymns, and material culture. Expressed often in poetic rather than intellectual language, prayer and praise effectively precedes and underpins the theological elucidation of Mary’s role in salvation. Throughout the patristic period, homilists delighted in discovering intimations of Mary’s virginal motherhood in the phrases, images, objects, episodes, and personages of the Hebrew scriptures. An ever-growing stock of inventive literary images and elaborate phraseology embellished the liturgy. (emphasis mine)
Pelikan observes “…there is no altogether incontestable evidence that it was used before the fourth century, despite Newman’s categorical claim that “the title Theotocos, or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from primitive times.”
Carroll contends “…there is little evidence or no evidence that anything like the Mary cult existed during the first four centuries of the Christian Church.”
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Ott, 215-16.
Llywelyn, “Mary and Mariology.”
Jaroslov Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries: her place in the history of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press,1996), 57.
Michael P. Carroll, The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological Origins (Princeton University Press, 1986), 4.
Ephesus? That are also had a tradition:
So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. (Acts 19:27-28)
Mary’s unparalleled stature as a figure to whom the faithful sought recourse grew through the slow accumulation of a complex matrix..An ever-growing stock of inventive literary images and elaborate phraseology embellished the liturgy.
Pelikan observes “…there is no altogether incontestable evidence that it was used before the fourth century, despite Newman’s categorical claim that “the title Theotocos, or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from primitive times.”
Carroll contends “…there is little evidence or no evidence that anything like the Mary cult existed during the first four centuries of the Christian Church.”
Par for the Catholic course, but tradition is and means what they say, based on tradition.
Thanks. Is your whole paper online?