Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary - Hardcover

Rubin, Miri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713998180 ISBN 13: 9780713998184

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2009

Synopsis

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is one of the most powerful, influential and complex of all religious figures. The focus for women, the inspiration of faith, the subject of innumerable paintings, sculptures, pieces of music and churches, Mary is so entangled in our world that it is impossible to conceive of the history of Western culture and religion without her.

Miri Rubin's Mother of God is a major work of cultural imagination. Mary's role in the Gospels is a relatively minor one, and yet in the centuries during which Christianity established itself she emerged as a powerful, strange and ungovernable force, endlessly remade and reimagined by wave after wave of devotees, ultimately becoming 'a sort of God', in ways that have always made some Christians uneasy.

Whether talking about the vast public festivals celebrating Mary that sweep up entire communities or the intense private agony of individual devotion, Rubin's book is a triumph of sympathy and intelligence. Throughout Christianity's journey from mysterious origins to global religion, the Mother of God has been a profound presence in countless lives - Mother of God is the story of that presence and a book that raises profound questions about the human experience.

About this title

Review:

This is a book to fascinate the social historian. Here is wide learning, elegantly expressed. A brilliant and enlightening study of the religious imagination. (Sister Wendy Beckett, author of 'Sister Wendy on Prayer')

Mother of God is a breathtaking work of scholarship, surely the finest account of Mary's impact on world culture from biblical up to modern times. Miri Rubin captures Mary's profound appeal-as mother and virgin, chaste and fertile, chosen and modest, life-giver and mourner-and as an inspiration to countless artists, writers, and believers. It's a remarkable achievement by one of the most gifted historians at work today. (James Shapiro, Columbia University)

Miri Rubin's Mother of God is an intellectually exuberant tour-de-force. Like the great cloak that in some medieval images billows out from the Virgin, enclosing her rapt worshipers, this book reaches out to embrace a startling range of human dreams, fears, and hopes across many centuries. (Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University)

Review:

`Miri Rubin's Mother of God is an intellectually exuberant tour-de-force. Like the great cloak that in some medieval images billows out from the Virgin, enclosing her rapt worshipers, this book reaches out to embrace a startling range of human dreams, fears, and hopes across many centuries.'

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0713998180
• ISBN 13: 9780713998184
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 560