The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648

Abstract

Art works depicting the mother of God, even in nonscripturally- attested situations (such as her sinlessness and perpetual virginity, and her assumption into heaven) remained, but she did not intercede with Christ on behalf of sinners, who were not to pray to her. Under the effect of Lutheran preaching and catechizing (94-102), ordinary Christians probably altered their perceptions of those Marian images that survived. Later, the militancy of the Jesuits, who enjoined the people to new heights of veneration of this saint, extracted from the Protestant, now Lutheran, side a more categorical rejection of such "idolatry" than in Nuremberg.