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MEDIEVAL SERVITE MARIAN SPIRITUALITY

Conrad Borntrager, O.S.M.

By the thirteenth century, Marian devotion was so much a part of the religious culture of Western Europe that it was present in all the new religious foundations of this exciting period. Some of these religious foundations showed by their very titles that they had a special devotion to Mary, the Mother of God. One of these was the Order of Servants of Mary, or Servites as they are more commonly called today.

In order to understand better the Marian element in the spirituality of the Servants of Mary, some clarifications are necessary:

1) The Marian spirituality within the Servite Order must be seen in relation to the general Marian devotion within society at large, to other elements of Servite spirituality of this period, and in particular in relation to the other mendicant orders, especially to the Franciscan and Dominican Orders both of which had a notable influence in the foundational years of the Servite Order.

2) As the name of the Order of Servants of Mary itself suggests, the essential relationship between the friar and Our Lady is that of servus to Domina: Servant to his Lady. And since this was not a new appellation, it is necessary to study first its roots in the biblical notions of servant and service of the Lord, and especially Mary as Servant of the Lord, and then trace the development of service in relation to Our Lady in Western Christendom, at least from the treatise on virginity by St. Ildephonsus of Toledo in seventh-century Visigothic Spain, down through the monastic usage to the thirteenth century.

3) It is also necessary to keep in mind that the Servite Order, unlike most other orders of the period, had a "formational" period (that is between the foundation and the final approval by the Holy See) which was very long, almost sixty years. This was due mainly to two factors:

a) First, there was a gradual evolution within the Order: from a lay confraternity (before 1245), to an eremitical foundation on Monte Senario which followed the Rule of St. Augustine (1245 to 1256), and then back down into the cities of central and northern Italy and Germany (after 1250). As it moved into the cities, the Order began to follow the patterns of the major mendicant orders. This evolution from an eremitical community with strict mendicant poverty to a more active religious order with less emphasis on the contemplative and penitential dimensions as well as the legal aspects of poverty was complete by the 1260s or 1270s, but certainly before the Second Council of Lyons in 1274.

b) Secondly, the Second Council of Lyons in 1274 suppressed all mendicant orders except the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians. This made it necessary for the Servants of Mary to ignore a previous papal approval, as a mendicant order, in 1251/1252, and to gradually seek a new papal approval, which was eventually given in 1304 by Pope Benedict XI.

Thus the normal formational period would have been from 1245, when part of the lay confraternity evolved into a true religious order, with diocesan approval before 1247 and approval by the Papal Legate in Tuscany in 1249, to 1251/52 when it received the approval of Pope Innocent IV. This was a period of less than ten years. But because of the evolution within the Order, and especially because of the restrictions of Lyons II, it was necessary to set aside the earlier approval and begin over.

4) Finally, the usual types of sources—such as letters of popes, cardinals, bishops, notarized acts of various types, legislative and liturgical sources—are certainly important, but it is especially necessary to understand the latest studies regarding the Legenda de origine (LDO), the earliest narrative account we have of the foundation of the Order, and therefore of its spirituality.1