Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Our Lady is not European

Our Lady is not European

Last updated on: October 21, 2019 at 7:36 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Our Lady is not European 2019-10-21T19:36:46-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

This image is one of my favorite paintings of the Virgin Mary.

Please, just admire it for a moment before we get into an art history lecture. I love her expression, the gracefulness of her pose, the sumptuous Renaissance dress, the solemn or bored angels, the sweetness of that chubby Baby Jesus. I like to imagine Our Lady looking just like this sometimes when I pray to her.

This painting is the “Magnificat Madonna,” by Sandro Botticelli, painted in 1481. Botticelli was a painter of the Florentine School in what is now Italy. He painted many gorgeous Madonnas with light skin and flowing blond hair like that. He’s also famous for his paintings of the pagan goddess Venus with light skin and flowing blond hair. He used the same model for both subjects, Venus and Mary, on purpose; you might say he viewed the Mother of God as a sort of fulfillment of what people loved in Venus.

I love seeing how people incorporate Our Lady into their own cultures and mythologies like that. They make images that don’t look a thing like her, to express their devotion, and that’s a wonderful part of Catholicism.

Oh, that’s right. In case you didn’t remember, the Virgin Mary isn’t European.

It’s so easy to forget that historical fact. European people have made images of Jesus and Mary as Europeans for centuries; they’ve become symbols of Europe and “Western culture.” But that’s not what they were when they walked among us on earth. They weren’t Western and certainly not European.

They saw Europeans from time to time, of course. The people from Europe were the conquerors, the foreigners who colonized their world and thought of their culture as dirty and degenerate. Italians, Romans, white people from what is now Italy, were the soldiers who occupied her country and prowled around it heavily armed, to make sure it didn’t escape their grasp. Imagine how she must have felt– how indigenous women in occupied countries have always felt when they were near the people who conquered them. She had been raised knowing that those conquering soldiers could do whatever they pleased to indigenous Jewish girls like her– anything at all that they wished, and they did. She surely knew people they had raped and tortured. Imagine the shudder as she went about her daily business. Imagine her fear as she raised her Son in Nazareth, a city occupied by the conquering race that nearly killed her precious Baby in a genocide, to prevent an uprising. Imagine how her heart shot into her throat if a Roman soldier walked too close to Joseph’s carpentry shop and glanced at the baby. Imagine how she felt when she lost Him in Jerusalem, and when she found Him again. Imagine what she was thinking, or trying not to think, as she watched Him preaching the Gospel in front of them.

Eventually, the Romans tortured Jesus to death.

Mary– Miriam, actually, and even that name as you read it in your head probably isn’t the exact pronunciation– Miriam was not European. She was a Jewish woman, but she didn’t look like the Ashkenazi Jewish people you might have met in Europe or the United States. She was a Jewish woman from what is now Palestine– one of the Semitic peoples of the Middle East like the Palestinians or the Bedouin. Her skin might have been any shade from olive tan to rich warm brown, but it wasn’t white. Her hair was deep brown or black. Her eyes were dark. Her clothing was not blue. Painting Mary’s veil in blue was a tradition that came out of European culture, when blue pigment was ground from real jewels and the most expensive paint. They painted her clothes in blue to honor her majesty. In real life she probably wore a lot of brown, light browns to reflect the sun, layers to let the air flow– this kept her cool in the daytime and warm on chilly desert nights. She veiled after she was married, not with a lace mantilla but with a woven scarf. She went barefoot or wore sandals. She didn’t wear tights, underpants, bras, corsets or other things that have been customary in modest European dress.

The language she spoke was not a language that you and I, if you are of European heritage, find normal. The language the Italians spoke over her head, and the alphabet they wrote in, were alien to her. I don’t know whether she ever learned to read or speak Latin at all, but it wasn’t her native language.

The culture to which she belonged was a culture that didn’t look like anyone whose frame of reference is Western European Christianity. They had festivals at different times than we do. They sang hymns we don’t sing. Their idea of boring everyday foods and treats for special occasions were strange to us, and the rituals that accompanied meals were not the same as ours. She washed her feet before dinner and said a prayer that sounded like “Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha`olam…”

When she got pregnant, out of wedlock and under extraordinary circumstances, the cultural and religious taboos involved didn’t feel like the ones we of European heritage know. Her wedding to Saint Joseph didn’t involve tuxedos, a long white lace dress and a Baroque church. The advice and fretting she was subjected to from other women in the community probably wasn’t the advice and fretting you and I got when we were pregnant, if you’ve ever been pregnant. She swaddled her Son in swaddling cloths to prevent His bones from going crooked, because that was the folk wisdom of the day.

She sang Him lullabies that didn’t sound like the ones you and I grew up hearing. She raised Him in that strange culture with the strange language, she taught him manners and customs that aren’t ours, and she wove Him a seamless garment that isn’t like anything you and I see men wearing.

Eventually the Romans murdered Him.

He rose from the dead and ascended into Paradise.

The Romans began murdering His followers, but eventually, Christ conquered Rome. And from then on, the Italians acted as if they’d always been Christian, as if Christianity were something Italian. And from there, Christianity spread. It spread through Italy, where artists painted pagan figures like the Delphic Sybil on the walls of Catholic churches. It spread all over Africa where it had already begun; Christianity is considered one of the indigenous religions to Africa. It spread to Germany where they’ve celebrated the same Passion Play every ten years for centuries, performed in German by people who don’t look like Jesus or Mary. It spread to France, to England, to Ireland where my ancestors come from– my surname is Italian but that’s my husband’s fault. I’m of Celtic blood, not Italian. They say that Saint Patrick was the one who invented the Celtic Cross, by combining a Christian cross with a pagan “sun cross” that the Celts were already using.

Christianity spread to North and South America, where the Italians and the French and the English and so on all became the murderous conquerors of indigenous peoples– just as the Italians were over a thousand years earlier to the Jews in Palestine and to the early Christians. It spread to the indigenous peoples in the Americas, sometimes because of the conquerors and often in spite of them. And when Miriam appeared to the Aztec people on Mount Tepeyac, she appeared as an Aztec with light brown skin and black hair, not as a European lady.

She became such a symbol of Mexican culture that it’s hard to think of Mexico without bringing her up.

The indigenous Americans continued to make images of her that looked like them, not like Europeans. She looked tan or brown, had black hair, and wore strange clothes– or no clothes at all sometimes, if that was what the indigenous people were used to.

Today, I’ve had so many people telling me that an image of a brown-skinned and black-haired pregnant woman can’t possibly be anything but an idol, because it’s from a non-European culture and uses symbolism that is weird and unfamiliar, not to mention symbolism that comes from a pagan religion. They tell me that an image with pagan roots had no place in a Catholic church in Rome, the same city that has displayed the Delphic Sybil in the Sistine Chapel for hundreds of years. They tell me that vandalizing and destroying that image brings glory to Miriam of Nazareth– Miriam the brown-skinned woman whose Son was taken from her and murdered by Italians.

I just find it strange, that’s all.

Magnificat Madonna, pray for all who seek you in their own strange cultures.

(image via Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain)

Steel Magnificat runs almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

Interpretation of Scripture

Public face of Catholicism

Previous Post

October 21, 2019

The Icons in the Tiber

Next Post

October 23, 2019 No, You Are Not Cristeros

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

According to 2 Peter, what are believers partakers of?

Select your answer to see how you score.

God's kingdom Christ's sufferings Eternal glory The divine nature