"That most pure and immaculate Virgin": Laudian Marian piety and the feast of the Purification
Similarly, even Frank's reference to "that most pure and immaculate Virgin" was hardly unusual. Zwingli, after all, had used such language: "I esteem immensely the Mother of God, the ever chaste, immaculate Virgin Mary". In both cases, this is not - of course - a statement of belief in the immaculate conception, itself an innovation contested within the Roman tradition. Instead, it was an expression of the Virgin's sanctity. In the context of Frank's sermon, it had reference to her chaste conception of Jesus, as also suggested in Zwingli's phrase.
The discreet reference to Mary's perpetual virginity - "the first-born of his Mother, the first and only Son"- was, as Diarmaid MacCulloch has noted, entirely in keeping with the explicit teaching of Luther, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and Bullinger. We might even suggest that Frank's discreet language is closer to Calvin's more cautious agreement with the traditional teaching. Frank avoids the language of 'ever-virgin' in these sermons, a reticence probably due to a desire not to exalt virginity over normal domesticity:
He was brought here by a Virgin, and I know not how he can be brought by any better. Yet by a Virgin Mother here, that both Virgins and Mothers, Parents and others, all conditions might have an interest to present him.
When Frank affirms that the "the holy Virgin ... needed no purification for this Child-birth" it differs little from Calvin's insistence that "Mary and Joseph come to Jerusalem for another reason, to present Christ to the Lord", rather than seeking purification because of original sin: "if man were not born a sinner, if he were not by nature a child of wrath, if some taint of sin did not dwell in him, he would have no need of purification".
The example set by Mary and Joseph in obedience to the Law of Moses was described by Calvin as an "exercise of piety". When Calvin goes to on to state that this should shape our approach to worship, this is not entirely removed from Frank pointing to the example here offered to us:
So is God's method and order, so he requires it, after the custom of the Law, it is said here; and were there no reason else, Church-law and custom in Church business in all reason should carry it.
In all of this, then, we can see Laudian Marian piety conforming to Reformation norms, particularly the openness of Wittenberg and Zurich to maintaining some traditional forms of Marian piety, but also Calvin retaining the honorific 'blessed' and quietly accepting the teaching of Mary's perpetual virginity. Similarly significant is the fact that Laudian Marian piety followed the same form as that of Luther, finding its chief expression in preaching on Marian feasts.
Needless to say, Frank obviously does not invoke the Blessed Virgin (or even suggest in any possible way that this can be done), nor does he present the Blessed Virgin as somehow being removed from the rest of the Church or humanity in the purposes of salvation. This is particularly evident in a beautiful passage describing Candlemas as an anticipation of heaven:
from this day beginning our blessing God, the only lightsome kind of life, till we come to the land of light, there to offer up continual praises, sing endless Benedicites, and Allelujahs, no longer according to the Laws or Customs upon earth, but after the manner of Heaven, and in the Choire of Angels, with holy Simeon, and Anna, and Mary, and Joseph, all the Saints in light and glory everlasting. Amen. Amen.
Note how Mary is named amidst the other saints of this feast, not apart from them and not even first. This is a sign of the homeliness of Laudian Marian piety, a domesticity that is not overwhelmed by excessive grandeur or exalted claims. We look upon the Blessed Virgin Mary not as one removed from us because of her unique experience of being Mother of God but, rather, as one whose experience as Mother of the Lord is akin to and likened unto our participation in Christ, particularly in the Holy Sacrament:
At such a time as that, when our hearts are purified by repentance and faith; when the devout soul, which like his Mother, conceives and brings him forth, has accomplished the days of her Purification, and offered the forementioned offerings of the Turtle and the Dove, and we circumcised with the Circumcision of the Spirit, all our excrescent inclinations, exorbitant affections, and superfluous desires cut off, we may with confidence take him into our arms ... Into our hands we have taken him, and I hope into our arms, into our bosoms, into our hearts besides; take him yet up higher and higher into our affections, the very natural arms of our souls, more and more into them, nearer and nearer to us, closer and closer to our hearts; embrace and hug him close, as we those we most affectionate-love, and hold him fast, that he may no more depart from us, but delight to be with us as with those that so love him that they cannot live without him.
The homeliness of Laudian Marian piety is itself deeply rooted in the Reformation protest against an exaltation of the Blessed Virgin which set her apart from the rest of the communion of saints and over the Church. Above all, we can again see - as with Laudian preaching at the Epiphany - that such Marian piety was quite clearly within the bounds of Reformation teaching. It shared both the warmth of Luther and Zwingli, and the reserve of Calvin. What perhaps gave Laudian Marian piety a slightly different emphasis was its confidence and comfort. Nowhere in these sermons does Frank feel a need to critique Roman teaching and practice in order to justify his references to the Blessed Virgin. Laudian Marian piety demonstrated, in other words, how Protestants could reverence the holy Virgin.
(The painting is Andrea Mantegna 'Presentation at the Temple', 1455.)
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