> fwiw, and it sounds like cge may be less rusty on this than i, bernard
> of clairvaux was really the person to push mary as an object of
> devotion in the west.
well he was massively influential, and some of his sermons, like the one on the virgin's tears, are quite moving (well, not for everyone, of course)
but he's also really taking a position on an at times quite polemical debate that preceded him and heated up again in the way after some way after his death surge in his popularity -- there's been some interesting stuff written on S.Bernard
> i believe both the insistence on the virgin birth
> (i.e., jesus's birth as miraculous not only as far as conception but
> also in terms of delivery--mary remained a virgin even after she
> delivered) and on mary's bodily ascension can be traced to bernard in
> the 12th century.
no. apocryphal "gospels" have this in spades and the Nag Hammadi, which you can think of as the Jewish sources for making the bible in some respects, include this as central to many of the Mary-as-divine stories. now i'm dredging up material read a really long time ago, but one of the oldest texts detailing the bith of Jesus have M&J travelling with their sons and daughter, Salome, and Mary gives birth in a cave and Salome witnesses the baby passing out of her in a cloud of light. it's possible that the other version, where Salome is the midwife not the sister of Jesus is older, but the basic plot is the same.
> i imagine this was an issue in 1274 between the
> eastern and western delegations, but i don't think it was a critical
> issue.
>
> at least that's my dim recollection.
your dating for the revival of the debate is right, but it was a pretty major issue and the E.O and R.C. versions of Christianity had and have -- to the best of my knowledge -- quite different roles and images for the Virgin
Catherine
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