To understand the cult of the Virgin Mary is to understand the Christian religion. The Virgin Mary is a ubiquitous but enigmatic presence in Christian history and culture. The tradition about Mary forms a vast and multi-layered aspect of Western history, culture and spirituality. It is not just in the Catholic tradition that Mary has become a particular focus of study and interest. Mary has also become a crucial interest for Christians outside this tradition (Protestant, Anglican) as a path to ecumenical understanding. This book is intended as a reference book for the student or scholar seeking knowledge of the history and contemporary practice of the cult of the Virgin Mary. It provides new essays which give overviews of particular areas of study - both historical and thematic - together with texts from primary sources and important scholarly articles, some of which appear in English for the first time. The volume is designed to be suitable for use as a course book at undergraduate and Masters levels. The result is astonishing and will open up whole new avenues for theological and spiritual enquiry. "The Virgin Mary": A resource book for study will be essential for anyone who has a strong theological or devotional interest in Mary. But it will open the eyes of those who do not.

In recent years Mary has stepped out of the closet of piety and devotion and become the subject of serious theological study and work. For too long Mary was an icon for the repression of women by a male dominated Church, but now Mary is seen as a vital theological symbol, a symbol of true femininity and true humanity which the Church and the modern world needs urgently. Jung has argued that the Definition of the Doctrine of the Assumptioin was the most important religious event since the Reformation: the feminine principle has been absorbed into the Godhead. Yet amongst some modern Catholics, as well as most Protestant Christians, the Virgin Mary is still seen as someone who has a very small part to play in the drama of salvation and creation. In Mary, Sarah Jane Boss seeks to correct this view. She argues that Christian theology should conceive of the created order, both physical and spiritual, as sacred in the highest degree, and that this understanding is already implicit in traditions of Marian doctrine and devotion. Far from being peripheral this understanding of Mary is central to Christian doctrine. It must underlie any attempt to answer the fundamental ethical questions of our age, namely that of the extent to which human beings are entitled to intervene in the natural order.