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The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception.

It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, meaning that it is held to be a divinely revealed truth whose denial is heresy. Debated by medieval theologians, it was not defined as a dogma until 1854, by Pope Pius IX in the papal bull ''Ineffabilis Deus'', which states that Mary, through God's grace, was conceived free from the stain of original sin through her role as the Mother of God:

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

While the Immaculate Conception asserts Mary's freedom from original sin, the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563, had previously affirmed her freedom from personal sin.

Protestants rejected the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as un-scriptural, though some Anglicans accept it as a pious devotion. Opinions on the Immaculate Conception in Oriental Orthodoxy are divided: Shenouda III, Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, opposed the teaching; the Eritrean and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo accept it. It is not accepted by Eastern Orthodoxy due to differences in the understanding of original sin, although they do affirm Mary's purity and preservation from sin. Patriarch Anthimus VII of Constantinople characterized the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as a "Roman novelty".

The Immaculate Conception became a popular subject in literature, but its abstract nature meant it was late in appearing as a subject in works of art. The iconography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception shows Mary standing, with arms outstretched or hands clasped in prayer. The feast day of the Immaculate Conception is December 8.

History

Anne, mother of Mary, and original sin

Anne appears as the mother of Mary in the late 2nd-century Gospel of James. Anne and her husband, Joachim, are infertile, but God hears their prayers and Mary is conceived. The conception occurs without sexual intercourse between Anne and Joachim, which fits well with the Gospel of James' persistent emphasis on Mary's sacred purity, but the story does not advance the idea of an immaculate conception. The author of the Gospel of James may have based this account of Mary's conception on that of John the Baptist as recounted in the Gospel of Luke. The Eastern Orthodox Church holds that "Mary is conceived by her parents as we are all conceived."

Church Fathers

Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Cyril of Jerusalem developed the idea of Mary as the New Eve, drawing comparison to "Eve, while yet immaculate and incorrupt — that is to say, not subject to original sin." So too, Ephrem the Syrian said she was as innocent as Eve before the Fall.

Ambrose says she is incorrupt, a virgin immune through grace from every stain of sin. It was John Damascene's opinion that the supernatural influence of God at the generation of Mary was so comprehensive that it extended also to her parents. He says of them that, during the generation, they were filled and purified by the Holy Spirit, and freed from sexual concupiscence. Consequently according to Damascene, even the human element of her origin, the material of which she was formed, was pure and holy. This opinion of an immaculate active generation and the sanctity of the "conceptio carnis" was taken up by some Western authors. The Greek Fathers never formally or explicitly discussed the question of the Immaculate Conception.

Medieval formulation

By the 4th century it was generally accepted that Mary was free of personal sin, but original sin raised the question of whether she was also free of the sin passed down from Adam. The question became acute when the feast of her conception began to be celebrated in England in the 11th century, and the opponents of the feast of Mary's conception brought forth the objection that as sexual intercourse is sinful, to celebrate Mary's conception was to celebrate a sinful event. (The feast of Mary's conception originated in the Eastern Church in the 7th century, reached England in the 11th, and from there spread to Europe, where it was given official approval in 1477 and extended to the whole church in 1693; the word "immaculate" was not officially added to the name of the feast until 1854).

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception caused a virtual civil war between Franciscans and Dominicans during the middle ages, with Franciscan ' Scotists' in its favour and Dominican ' Thomists' against it. The English ecclesiastic and scholar Eadmer (c.1060-c.1126) reasoned that it was possible that Mary was conceived without original sin in view of God's omnipotence, and that it was also appropriate in view of her role as Mother of God: ''Potuit, decuit, fecit'', "it was possible, it was fitting, therefore it was done." Others, including Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), objected that if Mary were free of original sin at her conception then she would have no need of redemption, making Christ superfluous; they were answered by Duns Scotus (1264–1308), who "developed the idea of preservative redemption as being a more perfect one: to have been preserved free from original sin was a greater grace than to be set free from sin." In 1439, the Council of Basel, in schism with Pope Eugene IV who resided at the Council of Florence, declared Mary's Immaculate Conception a "pious opinion" consistent with faith and Scripture; the Council of Trent, held in several sessions in the early 1500s, made no explicit declaration on the subject but exempted her from the universality of original sin; and by 1571 the Pope's Breviary (prayerbook) set out an elaborate celebration of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December.

Popular devotion and ''Ineffabilis Deus''

The eventual creation of the dogma was due more to popular devotion than scholarship. The Immaculate Conception became a popular subject in literature and art, and some devotees went so far as to hold that Anne had conceived Mary by kissing her husband Joachim, and that Anne's father and grandmother had likewise been conceived without sexual intercourse, although Bridget of Sweden (c.1303–1373) told how Mary herself had revealed to her that Anne and Joachim conceived their daughter through a sexual union which was sinless because it was pure and free of sexual lust.

In the 16th and especially the 17th centuries there was a proliferation of Immaculatist devotion in Spain, leading the Habsburg monarchs to demand that the papacy elevate the belief to the status of dogma. In France in 1830 Catherine Labouré (May 2, 1806 – December 31, 1876) saw a vision of Mary as the Immaculate Conception standing on a globe while a voice commanded her to have a medal made in imitation of what she saw, and her vision marked the beginning of a great 19th-century Marian revival.

In 1849 Pope Pius IX issued the encyclical '' Ubi primum'' soliciting the bishops of the church for their views on whether the doctrine should be defined as dogma; ninety percent of those who responded were supportive, although the Archbishop of Paris, Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour, warned that the Immaculate Conception "could be proved neither from the Scriptures nor from tradition", and in 1854 the Immaculate Conception dogma was proclaimed with the bull ''Ineffabilis Deus''.

Dom Prosper Guéranger, Abbot of Solesmes Abbey, who had been one of the main promoters of the dogmatic statement, wrote ''Mémoire sur l'Immaculée Conception'', explaining what he saw as its basis:

For the belief to be defined as a dogma of faith ..it is necessary that the Immaculate Conception form part of Revelation, expressed in Scripture or Tradition, or be implied in beliefs previously defined. Needed, afterward, is that it be proposed to the faith of the faithful through the teaching of the ordinary magisterium. Finally, it is necessary that it be attested by the liturgy, and the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

Guéranger maintained that these conditions were met and that the definition was therefore possible. ''Ineffabilis Deus'' found the Immaculate Conception in the Ark of Salvation (Noah's Ark), Jacob's Ladder, the Burning Bush at Sinai, the Enclosed Garden from the Song of Songs, and many more passages. From this wealth of support the pope's advisors singled out Genesis 3:15: "The most glorious Virgin ... was foretold by God when he said to the serpent: 'I will put enmity between you and the woman, a prophecy which reached fulfilment in the figure of the Woman in the Revelation of John, crowned with stars and trampling the Dragon underfoot. Luke 1:28, and specifically the phrase "full of grace" by which Gabriel greeted Mary, was another reference to her Immaculate Conception: "she was never subject to the curse and was, together with her Son, the only partaker of perpetual benediction."

''Ineffabilis Deus'' was one of the pivotal events of the papacy of Pius, pope from 16 June 1846 to his death on 7 February 1878. Four years after the proclamation of the dogma, in 1858, the young Bernadette Soubirous said that Mary appeared to her at Lourdes in southern France, to announce that she was the Immaculate Conception; the Catholic Church later endorsed the apparition as authentic. There are other (approved) Marian apparitions in which Mary identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, for example Our Lady of Gietrzwald in 1877, Poland.

Feast, patronages and disputes

The feast day of the Immaculate Conception is December 8. The Roman Missal and the Roman Rite Liturgy of the Hours include references to Mary's immaculate conception in the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Its celebration seems to have begun in the Eastern church in the 7th century and may have spread to Ireland by the 8th, although the earliest well-attested record in the Western church is from England early in the 11th. It was suppressed there after the Norman Conquest (1066), and the first thorough exposition of the doctrine was a response to this suppression. It continued to spread through the 15th century despite accusations of heresy from the Thomists and strong objections from several prominent theologians. Beginning around 1140 Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk, wrote to Lyons Cathedral to express his surprise and dissatisfaction that it had recently begun to be observed there, but in 1477 Pope Sixtus IV, a Franciscan Scotist and devoted Immaculist, placed it on the Roman calendar (i.e., list of church festivals and observances) via the bull ''Cum praexcelsa''. Thereafter in 1481 and 1483, in response to the polemic writings of the prominent Thomist, Vincenzo Bandello, Pope Sixtus IV published two more bulls which forbade anybody to preach or teach against the Immaculate Conception, or for either side to accuse the other of heresy, on pains of excommunication. Pope Pius V kept the feast on the tridentine calendar but suppressed the word "immaculate". Gregory XV in 1622 prohibited any public or private assertion that Mary was conceived in sin. Urban VIII in 1624 allowed the Franciscans to establish a military order dedicated to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. Following the promulgation of ''Ineffabilis Deus'' the typically Franciscan phrase "immaculate conception" reasserted itself in the title and euchology (prayer formulae) of the feast. Pius IX solemnly promulgated a mass formulary drawn chiefly from one composed 400 years by a papal chamberlain at the behest of Sixtus IV, beginning "O God who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin".

Prayers and hymns

The Roman Rite liturgical books, including the Roman Missal and the Liturgy of the Hours, included offices venerating Mary's immaculate conception on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. An example is the antiphon that begins: " Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te" ("You are all beautiful, Mary, and the original stain f sinis not in you." It continues: "Your clothing is white as snow, and your face is like the sun. You are all beautiful, Mary, and the original stain f sinis not in you. You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the joy of Israel, you give honour to our people. You are all beautiful, Mary.") On the basis of the original Gregorian chant music, polyphonic settings have been composed by Anton Bruckner, Pablo Casals, Maurice Duruflé, Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, Ola Gjeilo

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