Virgin

Mary, known throughout Christian tradition as the Blessed Virgin Mary, was a Jewish woman of first-century Galilee and, according to the New Testament, the mother of Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of Luke presents her as residing in Nazareth when the angel Gabriel announced that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear a son to be named Jesus. She was betrothed to Joseph, described as a righteous man of the lineage of David. Luke records her journey to the hill country of Judah to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth and the canticle known as the Magnificat. The Gospel of Matthew narrates Joseph's acceptance of Mary after a dream, the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem in the days of Herod the Great, the homage of the Magi, the flight into Egypt, and the family's later settlement in Nazareth.

The canonical Gospels give only scattered notices of Mary after the infancy of Jesus. The Gospel of John places her at the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee, where Jesus turned water into wine at her request, and at the foot of the cross, where he commended her to the care of the beloved disciple. The Acts of the Apostles lists her among those who persevered in prayer in the upper room in Jerusalem after the Ascension. Later Christian writings, above all the mid-second-century Protoevangelium of James, supplied names for her parents, Joachim and Anne, and an account of her childhood and presentation in the Temple. These stories, though not historically verifiable, shaped liturgy, iconography, and popular devotion in both East and West.

No contemporary historical source records the year or place of Mary's birth or death. Liturgical calendars observe her nativity on 8 September and her falling asleep, or Dormition, and Assumption on 15 August. From the early centuries she was honored as Theotokos, a title dogmatized at the Council of Ephesus in 431 against those who would deny her the dignity of Mother of God. Roman Catholic teaching later defined that she was conceived without original sin (the Immaculate Conception, 1854) and that at the end of her earthly life she was assumed body and soul into heaven (1950). Eastern Orthodox Christianity likewise venerates her above all saints, celebrating her Dormition, and holds the doctrine of her perpetual virginity in common with Catholicism and some other Christian traditions.

Mary has been the object of unparalleled Christian devotion, expressed in the Hail Mary, the Angelus, the Rosary, akathists, and countless churches, icons, and pilgrimages. Claimed apparitions at Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, and many other sites have further extended her cult. She is invoked as patroness of the universal Church, of mothers and virgins, of numerous nations, and of a wide range of human needs. Critical historical knowledge of her life remains confined to the brief New Testament references; the rich later tradition, while theologically and culturally of immense importance, cannot be treated as a source of precise biographical dates or details.