History's Queen: Exploring Mary's Pivotal Role from Age to Age

"Drawing on Scripture, Catholic tradition, popular devotion, and some of the most significant moments of Mary’s miraculous intercession, Mike Aquilina’s insightful and engaging History’s Queen provides us with an opportunity for deepening our love for the Mother of God and growing our understanding of Mary’s unique role in salvation history."

Michael O’Neill

The Miracle Hunter

Coauthor of Virgin, Mother, Queen

A very impressive book that is much needed in our time.

Steve Weidenkopf

Adjunct Professor

Christendom College Graduate School of Theology

Author of Timeless: A History of the Catholic Church

"Mary has been central to the history of Christianity since the beginning when Luke painted her portrait in his infancy narratives. Theologically, devotionally, and culturally, Christianity is inconceivable without her. In History’s Queen, Mike Aquilina deftly disentangles the various threads by which God wove Mary into the story of his Incarnation and love. It is a story that has delighted and challenged Christians from Genesis to Revelation and from antiquity to the present day, here told with sensitivity to its scriptural roots and its significance for how Christians define themselves through devotion to Mary as the Mother of God."

Rachel Fulton Brown

Associate Professor of History

The University of Chicago

Author of Mary and the Art of Prayer

Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

____________________________________

© 2020 by Mike Aquilina

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Ave Maria Press®, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556, 1-800-282-1865.

Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province of Holy Cross.

www.avemariapress.com

Paperback: ISBN-13 978-1-59471-987-5

E-book: ISBN-13 978-1-59471-988-2

Cover image © sedmak/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

Cover and text design by Andy Wagoner.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Aquilina, Mike, author.

Title: History’s queen : exploring Mary’s pivotal role from age to age /

Mike Aquilina.

Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : Ave Maria Press, 2020. | Includes

bibliographical references. | Summary: "As intercessor par excellence,

Mother of the Church, and Queen of Heaven, Mary has been quietly-and

not so quietly-present throughout history. In History’s Queen, Church

history author Mike Aquilina reveals Mary’s oft-overlooked role in a

range of pivotal historical moments. Reclaiming a Catholic tradition of

affirming divine providence and miraculous interventions in human

history, Aquilina reveals the possibility that the Mother of God is a

vital key for understanding both our past and our future"-- Provided by

publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020017476 (print) | LCCN 2020017477 (ebook) | ISBN

9781594719875 (paperback) | ISBN 9781594719882 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint. | Church history.

Classification: LCC BT603 .A68 2020 (print) | LCC BT603 (ebook) | DDC

232.91--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017476

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017477

Contents

Introduction: The Mother of All Humanity

1. God’s Original Plan

2. The Mother of the Fathers

3. Protector of Byzantium

4. Illuminating the Dark Ages

5. The Virgin Is the Dynamo

6. The Plague and the Pietà

7. A Renaissance for Jesus and Mary

8. Victory and Discovery

9. Mary, Mary, True Revolutionary

10. Before the Battle, Mother

11. The Image on the Pipal Leaf

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

The Mother of All Humanity

She seems very ordinary, and smaller than he expected. Yet there is nothing frail about her. If he had to pick one word, it would be gentle.

Every follower of the Way who passes through Ephesus pays her a visit. She always has time for them. But would she have time for this? Would she have time to sit for hours while he captures her image for the sake of the many who would never be able to see her in person?

Of course she would. She always has time, his friend Paul had told him. And he was right. Here he is in the tiny house she shares with John, and she has all day for him.

So Luke sits down with his tools and a big block of wood, and as he carves she begins to tell him the story. Every word of it burns itself into his memory.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. . . .

Mary at the Center

The tradition that St. Luke was an artist as well as a writer is very old. We don’t know how old, but it was already ancient in the 700s, when the great controversy about icons erupted in Constantinople.

In the East, there are several famous painted icons attributed to St. Luke. In the West, where Christians used images in three dimensions, there is one famous image that will reappear throughout our story, a statue of the Virgin and Child attributed to St. Luke in Extremadura, Spain. It is enshrined in one of Spain’s most famous pilgrimage sites, the Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe.

Are the traditions true? They may be. They may not be. But like all such ancient traditions, they tell us very important truths about what people believed. In this case, they show us that Christians have always had an instinctive response when they hear the Gospel according to Luke, and it has been a response of Marian piety.

We certainly don’t have to believe that the historical Luke was a painter or sculptor to understand why the tradition seems appropriate. All the gospel writers give us the story of Jesus. But Luke is the one who gives us the story of Mary. He draws her portrait, in words if not on wood. He makes her a character we come to know and love. He puts Mary at the center with her Son.

When Christians tell their story, that is where Mary always is. Theologians, historians, poets, and ordinary believers recognize that Mary’s yes to God is the pivot of history.

When Mary says yes, the world changes.

All of history is divided into before and after. Mary’s place in history is unique.

But Mary’s part in history isn’t just one decisive moment. She is everywhere in history, from the beginning to the literally apocalyptic end. With Christian eyes, we see her in the story of creation. We see hints of her throughout the Old Testament. When we finally meet her in the New Testament, we feel as if we already know her.

For the early Church Fathers, history unfolded according to the divine economy, God’s plan hidden from all eternity (Ephesians 3:9) and revealed in the acts of creation and salvation. The Fathers believed that everything in history—not merely the extraordinary interventions but everything—pointed to the provident Creator. Thus, human events and the natural world stand with scripture as witnesses to God. They testify to his design by means of types and signs.

From the earliest days of the Church, the Fathers believed that Mary’s role was in the mind of God even before the creation of Eve, and it was signified throughout the Old Testament and in the created world.

The Mother Who’s Always There

How does a mother act in the lives of her children? We can see a mother acting when she picks up her crying child, when she scolds the one who needs some discipline, when she brings her children a little gift. But there are many other ways a mother is there, even when we and the children don’t see her.

First of all, she is always physically there. Modern biology tells us that mitochondrial DNA is inherited exclusively from the mother. We all carry a piece of our mothers with us—the DNA programming only she could give us. Scientists can use that mitochondrial DNA to trace a line back from mother to mother into the distant past. In fact, evolutionary biologists have used mitochondrial DNA to show that all living human beings today can trace their ancestry to one single female ancestor—an idea that might strike Christians as strangely familiar. In case we missed the point, popular science reporting has dubbed this common ancestor Mitochondrial Eve.

Your own individual mother is also always with you, even after she has left this life. The things she taught you, the experiences you had with her, even just the feeling of being next to her—these things stay with you for the rest of your life. This is true, the psychologists tell us, even if you have no conscious memory of your mother.

Mary, the Mother of all humanity, acts on us in an analogous way. We may not consciously remember her, but at the deepest level of our being, we know her.

There is a way to meet Mary face-to-face, however. It starts by opening the Bible.

Mary in the Bible

What we know about Mary from the Bible may seem sparse, but it’s probably all we really need to know. The gospel writers actually give us more details about Mary than about any other character in the gospel who isn’t Jesus himself. In fact, the gospel narratives tell us enough not only to put together some of the most important events in Mary’s life but also to draw a portrait of Mary herself.

We have to piece together her biography from all the gospels and a bit of the Acts of the Apostles. Of all those sources, Luke is the one who gives us the most detailed portrait of Mary. Regardless of whether Luke was actually a painter, the legend makes sense as a metaphor. Luke gives us the most detailed word-portrait of Jesus’ Mother, one that tells us a lot about what kind of person she was, and one that may well have come from hearing her personal memories of the events from her own mouth.

Annunciation

We first meet Mary in Luke’s gospel as a young woman (we’re not told her age) already engaged to be married. When the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to announce that she will bear the Savior, she is naturally surprised and confused.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!

But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be.

And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;

and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,

and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever;

and of his kingdom there will be no end."

And Mary said to the angel, How shall this be, since I have no husband?

And the angel said to her,

"The Holy Spirit will come upon you,

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;

therefore the child to be born will be called holy,

the Son of God.

And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible. And Mary said, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her. (Lk 1:26–38)

Let it be according to your word. Mary is thoughtful, but also faithful. Luke tells us that she considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. She asks the obvious question. But when she has the chance, she assents to God’s will.

We learn a lot about Mary from this exchange, and perhaps we can guess a little more.

Was she already dedicated to perpetual virginity? It seems likely. She is betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph. If she were planning on the ordinary sort of marriage, she might ask, How can my son possibly be a king? But it seems odd to ask, How shall this be, since I have no husband? She’s going to have one soon—unless she means that she is not going to have a husband in the ordinary way.

Joseph

Matthew tells us about the betrothal and the pregnancy from Joseph’s point of view.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to send her away quietly. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

"Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and his name shall be called Emmanuel"

(which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus. (Mt 1:18–25)

Like Mary, Joseph is surprised and confused. We learn a lot about his personality just from his decision here. He’s a just man. He seems to know from the start that Mary is pregnant of the Holy Spirit, but he knows how the situation will