The Immaculate Conception: Devotion and doctrine in high and late medieval Europe

This dissertation is about an aspect of Marian devotion as it played out in the culture of medieval Europe. The introduction gives an overview of the chapters and discusses the place of this study within the context of a long tradition of Marian studies. Specifically, it argues that the emphasis on theology alone is not sufficient to understand what was, and still remains, a dynamic intercourse between devotion and doctrine.;The first two chapters trace the history of the doctrine and practice from the patristic age to the promulgation of doctrine at the Council of Basel in 1439. Augustine's notion of original sin, the celebration of the Feast of the Conception in Anglo-Saxon England and its resuscitation after the Norman Conquest all contributed to the rise of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, a notion unique to the Latin West. Until the practice was in place, there was no doctrine which was the result of centuries of debate and controversy.;While the history of doctrine is fairly straightforward, the content of devotion is a more subtle matter, and this is addressed in the second half of the dissertation. The third chapter focuses on sermons and related materials, and the fourth looks at the contents of liturgy. The focus in both cases is on England since it is there that the devotion first took shape. While the sermons range from the vernacular to the learned, there is little to indicate that the doctrinal debate made much of an impact on them. The same can be said of liturgy, here an analysis of the propers of the Feast of the Conception of the Virgin. Both the sermons and the liturgy, as well as representations in pictoral art, suggest that the devotion which gave rise to doctrine did not take much heed from it, but relied more on a less theological formula such as the apocryphal narratives of the Virgin's life and an eleventh century miracle promoting the celebration of the Feast of the Conception.