Note 37.1 — The Evolution of Religion

It is strange that Epiphanios should quote this rite as an example of pure paganism. This cannot be true: the image has been carefully signed with the cross in such a way as to suggest, not casual violence, but the deliberate intention of the worshippers; nor could the formula, “the Virgin has born the Eternal,” have been part of a purely pagan liturgy consecrated to the Hellenic Kore. Still less could the service be purely Christian: at least I imagine that a naked Virgin, kept in a cavern shrine and carried round with timbrels, would be a unique fact in Christian archæology. The belief is forced upon us that we have here a blending of at least two rival creeds in a period of transition. An old ritual of Kore at Alexandria, the goddess of the underworld whose statue was kept in a subterraneous cavern, may have included a kind of passion play in which a holy child was born: as this occurred near the beginning of January, it could all the more easily be adapted to the requirements of a gradually prevailing Christianity. The idol is sanctified with the sign of the cross, and the child is called “the Aion.” This name betrays the influence at work. The doctrine which laboured most zealously to combine the various elements of the pagan and Christian creeds was Gnosticism, and “Aion” was a figure which the Gnostics borrowed from Mithraism.37.1 It seems that the religious rays from Hellas, Persia, and Bethlehem converged at the “Korion” of Alexandria. But the name Κόρη does not seem to have usually formed part of the sacred title accepted by the early Church for the Mother of our Lord. Probably the name had acquired a personal association with the pagan goddess too strong to allow it to be used for the new faith;37.2 nor was the idea of virginity so directly connoted by it as by the term παρθένος: hence ἡ ἁγνὴ παρθένος or ἡ ἁγία παρθένος is chosen for the Christian appellation of Mary. But these words themselves belong to the ancient hieratic vocabulary of Hellas, for the maiden-goddess known by no other name than Parthenos had long been adored in various states of Asia Minor and Thrace;38.1 “Hagne,” the “Holy One,” was a divinity dear to the Arcadians;38.2 and at Assos, the chief port of Mysia, visited by St Paul on one of his journeys, an inscription attests that “the Holy Virgin of our fatherland”—such is her style—had been pre-eminent in the pagan worship.38.3 Moreover the sacred title, “the Mother of God,” was sympathetic with a very ancient and dominant Mediterranean faith: in prehistoric times from Crete, and at a later period from Phrygia, had gone forth the worship of the divine mother, known generally as “the Gods’ Mother” or “the Mother,” which had left a deep impress upon the religious imagination of the various races of the Greek and Roman world. It is no paradox to affirm that one of the streams that fostered the later growth of Mariolatry may have descended from the Minoan palace of Knossos.39.1