The name Mary comes from the Hebrew “Maryam” which is formed from “mar” meaning “bitter” and “yam” which means “water” or “sea”. In the Divine Comedy, Dante explains that his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven was instigated by Mary, who in Catholic dogma, has the role of Intercessor or Redemptrix, and who can be asked to intercede with God on the behalf of the sinner.
Dante describes Hell as a pit with nine concentric circles spiraling down, and with the lowest circle devoted to the worst sin of treachery. There he finds Judas Iscariot - traitor to Jesus, and Brutus and Cassius - traitors to Julius Caesar, all three eternally chewed upon by the three faced head of Satan. The first traitor, Satan, exploded the depression that forms Hell when he fell from Heaven, and the pressure caused the simultaneous eruption of Mount Purgatory on the other side of the world.
Dante emerges from Hell or the Inferno, at the base of Mount Purgatory, which in Catholic dogma, represents the staging ground where Christian souls must cleanse themselves of sin before attaining Heaven. |
After Dante meets numerous excommunicated and late repenting souls, he begins his climb. The mountain is ringed by a path that spirals up the mountain, and each of the seven levels is assigned to one of the seven deadly sins. The souls have to rid themselves of each deadly sin in turn before ascending. As lessons to the souls, there are relief sculptures showing scenes from Mary’s life that illustrate her perfect example of resistance to sin. Together with these scenes there are ones showing other virtuous people, and others showing examples of people sinning and suffering the consequences.
The reliefs on the first level devoted to the sin of Pride show Mary’s humility at the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel appears to hear to tell her that she’s been chosen to be the Mother of God. As Dante rises he sees scenes of Mary’s unwrathful attitude toward Jesus when he was found teaching in the Temple, her unslothful visit to Elizabeth, her unavaricious acceptance of the stable in Bethlehem when she bore Jesus, her ungluttonous restraint at the Marriage at Cana, and finally her unlustful confession to Gabriel:
"I know not a man" Luke 1:34, KJV |
In Dante’s Paradiso, Mary is compared to a rose, a flame, and the star we know as the planet Venus. Some scholars believe that Marianism, or the cult of devotion to Mary, is a remnant of earth mother goddess centered religions. For partly that reason, some theologians believe that Marianism is a heresy, and use it to attack Catholicism. The iconography of Mary often includes symbols once attributed to earth goddesses, such as snakes (Hecate, Demeter), stars (Hera, Aphrodite), a suckling infant (Isis, Tellus), the moon (Cybele, Artemis), flowers (Core,Flora, Tellus), the sea (Aphrodite), grain and fruit (Demeter), doves (Aphrodite, Venus), and the death and resurrection and deification of a son or lover (Isis-Osiris, Cybele-Attis, Athena-Dionysus, Demeter-Triptolemus, Ishtar-Tammuz.)
The faces of Mary that form the image of Miriam, show her at various points in her life: the Presentation at the Temple, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Deposition (Pietà), the Pentecost, and the Assumption. |
