Virgin

The Virgin Mary, also known as Mary of Nazareth or the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a central figure in Christianity as the mother of Jesus Christ. According to the New Testament Gospels, she was a Jewish woman residing in the town of Nazareth in Galilee during the first century. The Gospel of Luke recounts the Annunciation, in which the angel Gabriel appeared to her, announcing that she would conceive a son by the Holy Spirit while remaining a virgin, and that this child would be called the Son of the Most High. Mary consented. She then visited her kinswoman Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea, where the Magnificat is attributed to her. The Gospel of Matthew similarly affirms her virginal conception and describes Joseph taking her as his wife after divine reassurance in a dream.

The infancy narratives place the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea, with Mary present at the event, the visit of shepherds or Magi, the presentation of the child in the Temple in Jerusalem, and a sojourn in Egypt according to Matthew before the family returned to Nazareth. In the Gospel of John, Mary is present at the wedding feast at Cana, where she notes the shortage of wine, leading to Jesus performing his first public miracle. She stands at the foot of the cross during the Crucifixion, and Jesus commends her to the care of the beloved disciple. The Acts of the Apostles mentions her among the disciples gathered in Jerusalem after the Ascension, praying in preparation for Pentecost. These New Testament passages form the core of what can be said about her life from the earliest Christian sources, which were composed in the late first century and emphasize theological meaning over exhaustive biography.

Later Christian writings, beginning with the second-century apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, elaborated a fuller legendary life including her parents Joachim and Anne, a miraculous conception and birth of Mary herself, and her dedication as a child in the Jerusalem Temple. Such accounts influenced art, liturgy, and popular piety across centuries but are not supported by independent historical evidence and are treated by scholars as later pious fiction. No contemporary non-Christian sources mention Mary. The end of her earthly life is likewise unrecorded in Scripture. Traditions of her Dormition and bodily Assumption into heaven arose in the early Church, becoming widely attested by the fifth and sixth centuries, with commemorative sites at a tomb in Jerusalem's Kidron Valley and a house associated with her in Ephesus. While the historical existence of Jesus' mother named Mary is not seriously disputed by historians of the period, precise dates, places of birth and death, and miraculous events remain outside the realm of verifiable secular history and belong to the domain of religious tradition and faith.

Mary's theological importance grew in the patristic era, culminating in the definition of her as Theotokos (God-bearer) at the Council of Ephesus in 431 to safeguard the doctrine of Christ's two natures. Subsequent developments in Catholic and Orthodox theology include the doctrines of her perpetual virginity, her Immaculate Conception, and her Assumption. She is widely venerated as a model of discipleship, an intercessor, and patroness of numerous causes, professions, illnesses, and places throughout the world. Devotional practices, feast days scattered throughout the liturgical calendar, and reported apparitions have marked Christian history. Because her veneration began in the earliest Christian communities, she was never subject to a later formal process of beatification or canonization.