Virgin

The figure known in Christian tradition as the Virgin, or the Blessed Virgin Mary, is identified in the New Testament as Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus of Nazareth. The canonical Gospels present her as a young Jewish woman of Galilee, betrothed to Joseph, a man of the house of David. Historically, almost nothing about her life can be dated with precision; the events associated with her belong to the late first century BCE and the early first century CE in Roman Palestine. The Gospel of Luke situates the Annunciation at Nazareth, and the Gospel of Matthew places the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of Herod the Great, after which the family is said to have lived for a time in Egypt before settling in Nazareth.

According to Luke, an angel announced to Mary that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear a son to be called Jesus. She is then described as visiting her relative Elizabeth in the hill country of Judah, an episode known as the Visitation. Luke's infancy narrative includes the birth at Bethlehem, the presentation of the child in the Temple at Jerusalem, and a later Passover visit when Jesus was twelve. Matthew's account emphasizes Joseph's role, the visit of the Magi, and the flight into Egypt. Mary appears only sporadically in the public ministry of Jesus: at the wedding at Cana in the Gospel of John, where she intercedes regarding the wine, and among those seeking Jesus during his preaching. The Synoptic Gospels mention her among family members; John places her at the foot of the cross, where Jesus commends her to the beloved disciple. The Acts of the Apostles names her among those gathered in prayer in Jerusalem after the Ascension, in the company of the apostles.

Extra-biblical Christian tradition, beginning in the second century with texts such as the Protoevangelium of James, elaborated a fuller life: parents named Joachim and Anne, a childhood associated with the Temple, and a perpetual virginity before, during, and after the birth of Jesus, a doctrine that became central in Catholic, Orthodox, and many other Christian theologies. Later tradition developed accounts of her Dormition and Assumption, with competing localizations at Jerusalem and Ephesus. A tomb in the Kidron Valley at Jerusalem has been venerated as hers since late antiquity, even as the doctrine of the Assumption holds that she was taken body and soul into heaven. None of these later details can be verified from contemporary historical sources.

Veneration of Mary as Theotokos, meaning God-bearer, was affirmed at the Council of Ephesus in 431. She was never formally canonized in the later juridical sense, because cultus of her person is attested from the earliest Christian centuries and is presupposed by the Church rather than conferred by a pope. Her principal liturgical commemorations in the Roman calendar include 1 January (Mary, Mother of God), 25 March (Annunciation), 15 August (Assumption), 8 September (Nativity of Mary), and 8 December (Immaculate Conception); Eastern churches keep corresponding feasts, notably the Dormition on 15 August. She is invoked as patroness of innumerable places, nations, and causes. Historically cautious biography can affirm only the Gospel outline: a Galilean Jewish woman, wife of Joseph, mother of Jesus, present at key moments of the early Jesus movement in first-century Palestine.