I don't agree with the thinking behind the question, so I'm putting
this in as a comment rather than as an answer.
The reason I don't agree with the thinking is because the cult of Mary
was already present centuries before Bernard of Clairvaux. It was
first expressed officially by the Church at the Council of Ephesus in
431 when she was given the title Theotokos (God-Bearer). Even this can
be seen as a development, in a watered-down form, of the worship of
the Mother Goddess that had been an integral part of human history
since the beginning of time, and had manifested in the Graeco-Roman
world in important cults such as those of Demeter and Isis.
http://eapi.admu.edu.ph/eapr98/kath.htm Isis in particular had been
frequently represented in ways which would later be used to represent
Mary, eg as Mother with the infant Horus at her breast, as crowned
with a circle of stars, and Isis also had the title Star of the Sea,
which was later used for Mary.
So Bernard of Clairvaux did not develop the cult of Mary himself,
although he fuelled it by his writings. "His Sermons on the Song of
Songs, was influential in developing the eroticized portrayals of Mary
as the love ideal to which all men should aspire. She fulfilled
virtually every role a woman can fulfill: tender sister, indulgent and
forgiving mother, highly sensual erotic ideal." This was just another
manifestation of the phenomenon of "courtly love" that occurred at
that time, in which the Troubadors worshipped the unattainable lady.
http://www.siue.edu/CHAUCER/prioress.html
I would guess the reason such a phenomenon developed was partly as an
unconscious reaction to the suppression of Goddess worship by the
Christians. It was an attempt to restore the balance once more and
reintroduce the principle of femininity as a natural and necessary
counterpart to the masculinity venerated by the Church. The lack of
such a balance reflects a psychological defect, because each human
being contains within him/herself elements of the opposite sex and
needs to find a way to integrate these two aspects together in order
to become a fully developed individual.
However, the Church seized on this development to maintain the status
quo and to denigrate women as a whole even further. Mary was the
exception, against whom the mass of ordinary women were made to appear
even more evil. Also, the semi-eroticized way in which devotion to
Mary could be expressed would have given the celibate priesthood a
safety valve through which to express their sexuality and thus avoid
having dealings with "wicked" women who would undoubtedly drag them
down into Hell!
The culmination of the Mary cult was the proclamation of the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception. By declaring that Mary was the only
human being to be born without the stain of Original Sin, this set her
even further apart from human women. Interestingly, this doctrine was
violently opposed by Bernard of Clairvaux.
http://cistercians.shef.ac.uk/cistercian_life/spirituality/virgin_mary/index.php |
