"The holy virgin": the BCP's Reformed Catholick Marian piety

Now follows a remarkable and interesting song of the holy virgin, which plainly shows how eminent were her attainments in the grace of the Spirit ... She announces that this kindness of God will be kept in remembrance throughout all generations. But if it is so remarkable, that it ought to be proclaimed everywhere by the lips of all men, silence regarding it would have been highly improper in Mary, on whom it was bestowed ... Let Papists now go, and hold us out as doing injury to the mother of Christ, because we reject the falsehoods of men, and extol in her nothing more than the kindness of God. Nay, what is most of all honourable to her we grant ... We cheerfully acknowledge her as our teacher, and obey her instruction and commands - from Calvin's Commentary on Luke 1, on the Magnificat.

Twelve: that is the number of times Calvin uses the term "holy virgin" in his commentary on Luke 1.  In Luke 2, he uses the term on four occasions. It is testimony to Calvin's reverence for Mary, a reverence inextricably caught up with our own experience of grace.  As Calvin states regarding the Visitation:

she is justly called blessed, on whom God bestowed the remarkable honour of bringing into the world his own Son, through whom she had been spiritually renewed. And at this day, the blessedness brought to us by Christ cannot be the subject of our praise, without reminding us, at the same time, of the distinguished honour which God was pleased to bestow on Mary, in making her the mother of his Only Begotten Son.

"The holy virgin", "justly called blessed", "remarkable honour", "distinguished honour", "our teacher": Calvin's use of such titles, we might suggest, is the basis for a Reformed Catholick Marian piety.  It is, of course, thoroughly Reformed.  In his commentary on the Angel's salutation to Mary, Calvin rejects any notion that these words may be used by us a prayer:

But if Mary’s happiness, righteousness, and life, flow from the undeserved love of God, if her virtues and all her excellence are nothing more than the Divine kindness, it is the height of absurdity to tell us that we should seek from her what she derives from another quarter in the same manner as ourselves.

He goes on to declare that titles attributed to Mary in late medieval Latin piety - "Queen of Heaven, Star of Salvation, Gate of Life, Sweetness, Hope, and Salvation" - were a rejection of her words in the Magnificat:

All are disclaimed by the holy virgin in a single word, when she makes her whole glory to consist in acts of the divine kindness. If it was her duty to praise the name of God alone, who had done to her wonderful things, no room is left for the pretended titles, which come from another quarter.

Such Reformed concerns, however, do not obscure the honour and reverence to be shown to the Blessed Virgin, indicated not least in the repeated use of "holy virgin".  Add to this Calvin's statement that the Magnificat "plainly shows how eminent were her attainments in the grace of the Spirit", while the Gospel account of the Visitation reveals how our salvation "cannot be the subject of our praise, without reminding us, at the same time, of the distinguished honour which God was pleased to bestow on Mary".

If we are seeking for a liturgical and devotional expression of this Reformed Catholick piety, then surely it is to the Book of Common Prayer that we should turn, and rather appropriately on this Black Letter Day that is the "Nativity of the B.V. Mary".  The BCP is indeed thoroughly Reformed in its rejection of invocations of Mary, of grandiose titles, and of feasts and doctrines lacking a basis in holy Scripture, such as the Assumption and Immaculate Conception.  It also shares with Calvin, however, a restrained, modest but yet warm Marian piety.

The rubric introducing the Magnificat at daily Evensong refers to it as "the Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary".  A collect, epistle and gospel are appointed for "The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary" and the Purification, listed in 'A Table of All the Feasts' as "The Purification of the Blessed Virgin".  The Black Letter Days of her Nativity and Conception are of "the B.V. Mary".  This traditional title of honour is, therefore, the Prayer Book's characteristic way of referring with reverence to "the holy virgin".

The Te Deum and Creed at Mattins, the Creed at Evensong, and the Nicene Creed at the Communion each ensure that praise for our salvation - for the Creed, "said or sung", is as much doxological as it is catechetical - is bound up with acknowledgement of the role of the Blessed Virgin in our blessedness.

This is also reflected in the Prayer Book feasts of the Purification and Annunciation, in which the Church's confession of the Lord's saving Incarnation and Passion are rightly understood as testifying to, in Calvin's words, "the distinguished honour which God was pleased to bestow on Mary".  It was the flesh that the Eternal Word assumed "in the womb of the blessed Virgin" (Article 2) which rested in the manger and hung upon the cross.  The Blessed Virgin is therefore necessarily recalled and honoured in the Church's praise for our salvation.

Then there is the Magnificat, the heart of the Prayer Book's Marian piety.  Day by day at Evensong the Blessed Virgin Mary is "our teacher" in this "remarkable" song, for she proclaims that "God has now granted the salvation which he had formerly promised to the holy fathers":

By these words Mary shows, that the covenant which God had made with the fathers was of free grace; for she traces the salvation promised in it to the fountain of unmixed mercy. Hence too we infer, that she was well acquainted with the doctrine of Scripture.

Placed as it is during Evensong, directly after the first lesson from the Old Testament or the Apocrypha, the Blessed Virgin is indeed "our teacher" as she instructs us in the praise the God of Israel for fulfilling His purposes, promised to Israel, in her Son, the Messiah. Her song of praise roots the Church in the Christological centre, for in Him, as the Apostle declares, we are "blessed ... with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places".

Reserved and modest though the Prayer Book's Reformed Catholick Marian piety might appear to be in comparison with Roman and Anglo-catholic norms, it is nevertheless rich and cannot accurately be criticised as 'low'. It was this Reformed Catholic Marian piety of the Prayer Book which nurtured and was given expression in the prayers of Andrewes in Preces Privatae, in the poetry of Donne and Herbert, in Laudian preaching for the Epiphany and Purification, and Restoration Marian teaching, seeing no contradiction but a deep continuity and coherence between the Reformed sola gratia and what a 1676 Annunciation sermon termed "the profound Reverence and Honour which Antiquity paid Her". (Such avant-garde and Laudian Marian piety was deeply Reformed, robustly rejecting any notion of invocation and any Marian doctrine beyond that revealed in Scripture.)

The Prayer Book has a rich Marian piety not in spite of but precisely because of the truth Calvin emphasised:

Mary’s happiness, righteousness, and life, flow from the undeserved love of God.

Such Reformed Catholick piety reverences "the holy virgin" for in her we see the outpouring of the grace of God upon humanity.  In her is seen "the power and free grace of God" and so we honour her, day by day, in praising God in her words, the "remarkable ... song of the holy virgin".