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This chapter looks at the portrayal of Mary, Jesus' mother, in the Gospels and in the Jesus biopics. The films ask two major questions: What was Mary's role in Jesus' infancy and childhood? And, what sort of relationship did Mary and Jesus have in his adulthood? It concludes that Mary's cinematic portrayal is affected by the conventional psychological assumptions of modern western society: the connection between childhood experiences and adult identity, and the notion that one of the marks of a mature adult is the quality of her or his relationship with parents and other family members. Also crucial is the role of Mary in Christian, particularly Catholic, theology. While Mary's role in film may be empowering for some women, she is generally cast in a supportive and secondary role.

Discussion of John's contemporary reputation as preacher and his extant sermons; of his use of rhetoric and the nature of his audience; detailed analysis of sermons on the Transfiguration of Christ and on the Dormition of the Mother of God (Theotokos), and its Mariology.

A brief account of the development of Byzantine liturgical poetry, and the role of Palestinian monasticism in his development, especially the evolution of the canon. Theological and literary analysis of three canons attributed to John Damascene: on Easter, the Transfiguration of Christ, and the Dormition of the Mother of God.

This chapter focuses on the history of interpretation of the Song of Songs, with a particular attention given to Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs. It also considers the important contribution of Origen in the history of biblical interpretation, as well as contemporary interpretations (e.g., feminist) of this poetic book in Hebrew Scripture.

This chapter looks at the development of Southwell's writing during his early years in the Jesuit novitiate, revealing that Southwell's writing matured during his stay in Rome, and following some of his activities there during the late 1570s. It was during this time when he tried – and failed – to enter the Jesuit novitiate. From here the discussion shifts to Southwell's early years in the novitiate, and studies his diary entries in order to determine the impact the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises had on him. This period also marked the beginning of Southwell's new poetic vision, and the chapter studies the effect flagellation (violence to the self) had on his poetry. It shows that most of Southwell's manuscript poetry in English features events from the Gospels, as well as elements of Catholic Mariology or sacramental belief, but also notes that some of his works appear to be bloodier and more visceral.

This chapter examines the history of and devotion to La Caridad del Cobre in Cuba. It analyses her story to explore Cuban/Cuban-American identity and to construct a Cuban/Cuban-American Mariology describes La Caridad's appearance in the early seventeenth century. It investigates how the image and narrative of La Caridad have functioned throughout Cuban history and explains how La Caridad grew to become a national symbol and devotion in Cuba.

Mary is the pure virgin at her conception and at the birth of Jesus as well as the exalted queen of heaven. But she is also the sorrowful mother. She understands and is with us in our suffering. More fundamentally, she shared fully in her son' suffering, having foreknowledge of his crucifixion from his birth. Feminine symbolism is central to the work of several key medieval mystical writers, including Hildegard of Bingen. This chapter explores the development of Mariology through the medieval world. It looks at five medieval women mystics who laid hold of these female symbols—Wisdom, Mother Church, and bridal soul—to affirm their own spiritual journeys as women empowered to speak, write, teach, and guide other women. It also discusses feminine symbols in Cistercian and beguine love mysticism, as well as the views of fourteenth-century recluse Julian of Norwich.

The chapter reads Shakespeare's late play, The Winter's Tale, along with Francisco Suárez's Mariological writings as anatomies of the media conditions required for a sovereign event. Shakespeare's play of “wonder” stages a series of recapitulations, as the political and theological pathways of sovereignty viewed in the previous chapters converge in a complex set of returns. Shakespeare's play of “wonder” draws on what Hent de Vries calls the technicity of a theological construction, the art (or techné) in which a mediated and mediating body is fabricated out of a collage of textual authorities, Ovid, Petrarch, and the book of Revelation, in the course of performing a ‘miracle.’ Like Suárez's Mysteries, The Winter's Tale is a discourse of special effects, of a performance that binds and links the spectator to a tradition that is at least as theatrical as theological, and in which what is at stake is less the body of the absolute object of desire (in this case the body of a long lost mother and queen) than the believer's relation to that object. In different ways, Shakespeare and Suárez show that sovereignty bonds are also always media-bonds, as political theology give way to what might be termed psycho-political theology.

This chapter investigates Brown’s engagement with Mariology in three ways. First, the chapter discusses Brown’s creative use of the Virgin Mary’s various iconographical depictions and cults, in order to restore her image to Orkney’s landscape. The chapter examines Brown’s ‘apocryphal’ texts, which reveal that he was more politically-engaged than is often thought. Last, this chapter provides a new reading of enculturation in Time in a Red Coat (1984), the novel that represents the high point of Brown’s Marian corpus.

This chapter examines extant theological views of Prophet Muhammad as an exemplar, noting tensions between humanization and idealization, and introducing Islamic feminist interventions related to exemplariness, prophethood, and emulation. It then engages Christian feminist perspectives on Mary and Mariology from Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Elina Vuola, and Marcella Althaus-Reid. These theologians explore the way gender, ideal representations, and power are present in Mariology and Marian dogmas and practices. The chapter returns to Muslima theology and outlines ways to re-envision the “beautiful example” of Prophet Muhammad in light of discussions of gender, power, and a hierarchical status quo.

This chapter discusses women visionaries in the role of popular theologans. Two adult women who encapsulate this concept were Jeanne-Louise Ramonet of Kerizinen, Brittany and Ida Peerdeman of Amsterdam. Both were rejected by the Church, although more recently Ida’s apparitions have been approved by her diocese. In both cases, female religious orders have maintained the shrines and form the core of support. Kerizinen’s international fame has faded, but the Amsterdam visions have a large global following. Nevertheless, both women’s work can be analysed like other theologians, in terms of its development and contribution. While both drew on existing Mariological tradition, they reworked it in an original way with symbolic ideas that have captured the interest of many devotees worldwide.

Chapter 5 surveys the constructive theological features of the underexplored writings of the Italian Thomist, Cornelio Fabro (1911–1995). This chapter sets the stage of Fabro’s historical context to suggest that Fabro’s loyalty to the Thomist revival after Aeterni Patris should not be interpreted as incompatible with his desire to negotiate the claims of the modern world. Instead, it focuses on Fabro’s recovery of Thomas Kierkegaard’s writings as a way into understanding Fabro’s wider project of renewal in Catholic theology in the modern age. In particular, this chapter explores Fabro’s writings on the Leonine revival of Thomism, modern atheism, and his treatment of Kierkegaard’s Mariology and Ecclesiology, which Fabro compares with that of John Henry Newman.