Cranmer's Christmas collect and a Reformed Marian piety

One of the most striking features of the collect Cranmer composed for Christmas Day (and to be prayed daily until the feast of the Circumcision) is its reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary: "to be born of a pure Virgin".  Of the three collects for the Masses of Christmas Day in the Sarum rite (they can be read in the Prayer Book Society's commentary), none make reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  This alone is worthy of comment.  Cranmer's reformed rite introduces a Marian dimension to the liturgical celebration of Christmas not found in the pre-Reformation rite.

Then there is the term Cranmer uses for the Blessed Virgin: "pure Virgin". It is not a term explicitly found in Scripture.  'Blessed Virgin Mary' is, of course, based on Luke 1:42 and 48.  Cranmer, however, did not choose it for his Christmas collect.  Instead he choose a term well known to medieval Latin Marian piety.  Take, for example, its use by Thomas Aquinas.  While a 'maculist', Thomas affirmed:

after Christ, who, as the universal Saviour of all, needed not to be saved, the purity of the Blessed Virgin holds the highest place (ST III.27.2).

In his commentary on the Ave Maria, he also states:

She exceeds the Angels in purity. 

What are we to make of Cranmer's willingness to use a term in his Christmas collect which late medieval Latin theology and piety consistently used to describe the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Cranmer here reflects a context in which, as Diarmaid MacCulloch states, "the Lutheran and Zurich reformers had managed to sustain" a range of traditional affirmations regarding the Blessed Virgin.  Alongside "Luther's warmth towards Mary", MacCulloch quotes Zwingli referring to "the ever pure Virgin Maid Mary", while Bullinger "could be suprisingly old-fashioned" when it came to Marian piety.

Cranmer's Christmas collect shares with the Wittenberg and Zurich Reformations a willingness to retain a doctrinally reserved but yet warm Marian piety as a means of securing the truth of the Incarnation against what MacCulloch describes as "the varied forms of radicalism which threatened the Chalcedonian synthesis", while also responding to "accusations from their conservative enemies that they dishonoured the Virgin".  Cranmer's reference to the "pure Virgin" is, then, reflective of this Wittenberg and Zurich commitment to continuity in both Christological orthodoxy and the historic Christian reverence for the Lord's Mother.

This also allows us to see avant-garde and Caroline Marian piety not as a move away from Reformation norms but, rather, as a continued expression of this willingness to reverence the Blessed Virgin Mary and appropriately use some pre-Reformation devotional forms.  Donne's "faire blessed Mother-maid", Herbert's "blessed Maid", and Cosin's praise for "the glorious and most blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord" each give expression to the same warm but clearly Reformed Marian piety.  Even Lancelot Andrewes' praise for "the all-holy, immaculate, more than blessed Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary" echoes Zwingli's "I esteem immensely the Mother of God, the ever chaste, immaculate Virgin Mary".

The Christmas collect also justifies the warm Marian references which would become characteristic of the 19th century recovery of the tradition of Nativity carols.  Cecil Frances Alexander setting before us the example of the Christ Child to encourage us to "love and watch the lowly Maiden", and Christina Rossetti evoking "his Mother only in her maiden bliss" worshipping the Holy Infant and calling us to imitate such Marian tenderness, are both examples of a warm Marian piety well within Reformation doctrinal norms, echoing Cranmer's collect and the willingness of Wittenberg and Zurich to maintain a lively reverence for the Blessed Virgin.

The revival of popular medieval Nativity carols with their Marian piety can likewise find a thoroughly Reformed rationale in Cranmer's use of "pure Virgin".  'Es ist ein Ros entsprungen', the "most highly favoured lady" refrain in 'Birjina gaztetto bat zegoen', and the repeated "Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ" in 'The holly and the ivy': each of these cohere with the doctrinal reserve and express the warm piety exemplified by the Christmas collect's use of "pure Virgin".  

With Cranmer's Christmas collect, then, we are invited share in a reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mary that while shaped by Reformation doctrinal reserve also evinces a devotional warmth and joy.  This Christmastide may Cranmer's collect encourage and renew us in such a warm and joyful reverence for, in Herbert's words, this "blessed Maid, And Mother of my God ... whence came the gold".

(The Royal Mail's Christmas stamps this year are wonderful examples of the quiet but warm Marian piety evident in portrayals of the Nativity in the stained glass of Church of England parish churches.  The stamp displayed depicts the Nativity window in St Andrew’s Church, East Lexham, Norfolk.)