CHAPTER 1. A Virgin Unspotted: Devotion to Mary in the First Two Centuries
On the Feast of All Saints, 1 November 1950, the See of St Peter exercised its rather recently identified privilege of defining doctrine infallibly by pronouncing the theological dogma of the Virgin’s bodily Assumption. In the words of Pius XII’s encyclical, Munificentissimus Deus, this dogma affirms that: According to His general rule, God does not will to grant the full effect of the victory over death to the just until the end of time shall have come. And so it is that the bodies of even the just are corrupted, and that only on the last day will they be joined, each to its own glorious soul. Now God has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.¹ Coming as the result of nearly a century of effort, mostly French and Italian, the decision was immensely popular with the faithful masses but was a matter of concern to some theologians, both at the time and in the years preceding the definition.² Prior to
