Tina Beattie (from her Substack account): The Nativity of the Virgin Mary – A Neglected Tradition
| The Nativity of the Virgin Mary A neglected tradition Tina Beattie Sep 8 Catholic and Orthodox churches celebrate the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (the Theotokos) today, 8th September. Last Sunday, I was invited to do a short reflection on the significance of Mary’s birth in the beautiful church of St Mary’s Church East Guldeford, consecrated in 1505, which is near our home in Camber. The church has neither electricity nor running water, but stands alone in the fields of Romney Marsh, surrounded by sheep, its quiet graveyard slumbering in the dappled shade of trees and graced by choirs of birds.   These old English churches embody a living history. In St Mary’s East Guldeford, the vicar (Revd Jacques Desrosiers) is reviving some of the feasts and liturgies of the medieval church. We have the blessing of the lambs in spring and harvest blessings in autumn, and this year we celebrated Lammas, an ancient agricultural festival probably dating back to Anglo-Saxon times. Here is the text of my reflection on the Nativity of Mary, with some images and links to accompany it.  The Nativity of the Virgin Mary, Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome (1296-1300) If you visit art galleries and medieval cathedrals in Europe, you’ll often see nativities that don’t look like the Christmas nativity scenes we’re used to, with Jesus in a manger in a stable, watched over by a donkey and an ox, his mother gazing at him in wonder. These other images show a nativity in a more lavish setting—in the bedroom of a courtly lady, reclining in bed, surrounded by midwives and other women caring for the mother and child. These are representations of the birth of the Virgin Mary, which was a popular topic of art and devotion in the medieval Church. The Feast of the Nativity of Mary is celebrated on the 8th of September, nine months after the observance of Mary’s conception on the 8th of December. Known as The Nativity of the Theotokos, Mary’s birth is one of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church, where it has been observed since at least the 6th century. But where does this non-biblical story come from, and why should it matter to us today? The account of Mary’s birth belongs within a much wider story of her life, in a second century text known as the Gospel of James. If you go into old churches in European cities such as the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua with its famous Giotto frescoes, or the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome with its mosaics, you’ll often see intertwined or parallel representations of the Life of Christ and the Life of Mary. These images are inspired by the Gospel of James, which draws on a number of biblical texts from the Old and New Testaments and fills in the gaps to give a full account of Mary’s early life. It begins with her elderly parents longing for a child, and ends with the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod, and the murder of John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah. This isn’t in the New Testament, but it’s based on the Old Testament story of the killing of the prophet Zechariah.  Giotto di Bondone, The Nativity of the Virgin Mary, Strovegni Chapel, Padua (1304-1306)  Dave and I in the Scrovegni Chapel, 2023 The Gospel of James fell out of favour in the western church in the 4th century, but in the Middle Ages it became a source for the hugely popular collection of the lives of the saints known as The Golden Legend. All these texts are available online, and they make fascinating reading. Here is the account of Mary’s conception and birth, which was used for the first reading: And behold, an angel of the Lord appeared and said: “Anna, Anna, the Lord, God, has heard your prayer. You will conceive and give birth, and your offspring will be praised throughout the whole world.” Anna said: “As the Lord, God, lives, if I give birth, whether a son or a daughter, I will offer it as a gift to the Lord, my God, and it shall serve Him all the days of its life.”And behold, two angels came and said to her: “Behold, Joachim, your husband, is coming with his herds.” For an angel of the Lord had appeared to Joachim and said: “Joachim, Joachim, the Lord, God, has heard your prayer. Descend from here, for your wife Anna has conceived in her womb.” …And behold, Joachim came with his herds, and Anna stood at the gate. Seeing Joachim coming with his herds, Anna ran and embraced him, saying: “Now I know that the Lord, God, has greatly blessed me, for behold, the widow is no longer a widow. And the barren woman: behold, I have conceived in my womb.” And Joachim rested in his house on the first day. …And her months were fulfilled — about six, but in the seventh month, Anna gave birth. And she said to the midwife: “What have I brought forth?” And the midwife said: “A girl.” And Anna said: “My soul has been exalted this day.” And she laid her down. When the days were fulfilled Anna purified herself from her impurity, gave the child her breast, and named her Mary. The Gospel of James tells of how the elderly couple, Anna and Joachim, are mourning their childlessness. The elders of Israel refuse Joachim’s sacrifice because he has failed to father a child, and he goes into the wilderness in shame. This is surprising, because in traditional cultures it’s usually the woman who is blamed when a couple is childless. Anna goes into mourning because she has neither a husband nor a child, but her maid tells her off and says she should dress up in her wedding clothes and go for a walk in the garden. There, angels appear to Anna and tell her that God had heard her prayer and she will have a child. At the same time, angels appear to Joachim tending his sheep in the wilderness, and tell him to go and meet his wife. The couple fall into each other’s arms at Jerusalem’s city gate, and several months later, Mary is born. That image became known as the Embrace at the Golden Gate, and in the Middle Ages it inspired some of the most beautiful artistic representations of married love. Anna and Joachim flow into each other’s bodies in an exquisite expression of tender, erotic love. You’ll find many such images if you look for the Embrace at the Golden Gate on Google Images, but be warned—you’re also likely to get a load of photos of couples having a dalliance on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  Giotto, Embrace at the Golden Gate, Scrovegni Chapel  The Catholic Church has always taught that Mary was sexually conceived, though there was some debate among medieval theologians over whether that was the best sex in the history of the world, or a rather distasteful duty that the elderly couple agreed to in order to have a child. Either way, the Gospel of James tells us that Joachim went home and rested after that meeting at the city gate, and when the time came, Anna gave birth to a daughter. This too is a lovely moment to reflect on, because it’s a rare example in ancient texts of a mother welcoming the birth of a daughter. Normally, sons are more highly prized than daughters—a tradition that until very recently persisted in our royal family. As we heard in that first reading: And she said to the midwife: “What have I brought forth?” And the midwife said: “A girl.” And Anna said: “My soul has been exalted this day.” But why should any of this matter to us today? There are various theories as to the significance of the Gospel of James and why it was written, but for me it’s an expression of the fact that to be human is to tell stories. We have a natural curiosity about the world and the people around us, and we fill in the gaps with memory and imagination.When the Gospel of James was written in the second century, the Christian Church was still in its infancy and it had yet to decide on what would become its scriptures. When the first Christians tried to make sense of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection, they turned to the Hebrew Bible and to Greek philosophy in order to tell a meaningful story about Christ, and the Gospel of James was part of that endeavour. It’s easy to forget that, when the New Testament authors refer to scripture, they’re referring to the Hebrew Bible—what Christians call the Old Testament. Jesus was, after all, Jewish, and he was born into the context of the people of Israel. They saw all the characters and narratives of the Old Testament, from the beginning of creation, as pointing to the coming of Christ. The biblical authors weren’t writing history as we understand it. They were telling stories of how God was present in everything that happened, through legends and oral traditions, poetry and prophecy, laws and taboos. Our modern idea that history should offer an objective account of the past is alien to traditional ways of understanding history, for the stories we tell are always seen through the lens of our own cultures, religions and traditions. History looks different depending on which side we’re on—victors or victims, conquerors or conquered, oppressors or the oppressed. Israel and Gaza, Ukraine and Russia, Iran and the United States, will all give very different historical accounts of these times we’re living through. The Gospel of James belongs within the biblical and non-biblical accounts that flesh out the story of Christ and help us to relate to it in ways that connect with our own lives by bringing it to life. The fact that Jesus was born of a woman meant that he was fully human as well as fully divine, but who was that woman? How did her story make him part of the human story, rooted in the story of Israel but branching out to become a story of all humankind?Mary’s birth is sometimes described as “the dawn of our salvation”, as in the traditional hymn, “Mary the dawn, Christ the perfect day.”  Her birth is the first appearance of the light of Christ, rising over the horizon of time to give light to the world. The Orthodox liturgy for the Nativity of the Theotokos gives glorious expression to this: Your Nativity, O Virgin, / has proclaimed joy to the whole universe! / The Sun of Righteousness, Christ our God, / has shone from You, O Theotokos! / By annulling the curse, / He bestowed a blessing. / By destroying death, He has granted us eternal Life. The Gospel of James would, in the Middle Ages, give rise to a host of other stories about Jesus’s family—not just his grandparents Anna and Joachim, but his aunts and cousins, and even his great grandmother, Saint Ismeria. These inspired a genre of art known as the Holy Kinship, which show Jesus surrounded by his female relatives and his cousins. Sometimes the setting is a garden, sometimes a house, and sometimes a church.  Holy Kinship altar wing, Cologne (1470-1490) Saint Anne was a hugely popular figure in medieval devotion and art. It’s usually Saint Anne rather than Joseph who features in images of the Holy Family, until she fell from popularity after the Reformation.  Master of Frankfurt, St Anne with the Virgin and Child (1511-1515) We can dismiss these devotions as superstition, but perhaps we can also reflect on what they tell us about what it means to be fully human. Jesus was not a one-man act. To be human is to be born into a world of belonging. It’s to be woven into many other people’s stories of kinship and community. In the feasts and fasts of the Christian year, we embody Christ’s story in our own lives, marking the passage of time with the joys and sorrows of his life and making them part of our own. Medieval households, like many traditional African households today, were often matriarchal. Women raised children while men were away trading or waging war. Today, nearly all lone-parent families are headed by a woman—nearly 90% in the UK, according to recent estimates. Those medieval traditions of art and devotion that show Jesus growing up in a household of women offer us a way of affirming women who give of their very best in raising their children, often with the help of their mothers and sisters, instead of buying into the idea that single mothers are a drain on society. For me, becoming a grandmother gave me a new sense of devotion to St Anne. The rich medieval accounts of Jesus’s extended family have shaped how I understand my own relationships and responsibilities. When my daughter gave birth to my granddaughter, I put a small statue of Saint Anne and Mary next to her bed.  Through that long and anxious night when she was in labour, I found myself reflecting on Saint Anne on the night of Jesus’s birth, and I wrote a poem: Were you awake praying through the wintry night for your daughter giving birth to pain? Did a refrain of the night she was born play in your memory – your heart’s delight, your mystery, your star of the sea? Did you dream of love’s rebirth, earth redeemed and God’s delig being born for us that starry night? Did you rise with the rising sun and, seeing the lily turn her face to the dawn, know that the child was born? Too often, we reduce the vast abundance of the Christian story to a series of moral rules and restrictions. The Birth of the Virgin reminds us that Christ brings fruitfulness and joy to creation, and there is no end to the stories we can tell about that.  This beautiful statue of St Anne with the infant Mary is in the Cloisters Museum in New York— photo taken by me during a visit to the States in 2014 Why not read this with my friend Leslye Colvin’s Substack reflection on the birth of Our Lady?  Leslye’s LabyrinthPondering Sacraments AnewRead more Thank you for reading “‘Listening to the Essence of Things’: Musings on Life”. 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