The Diversity Of Views Of The Perpetual Virginity Of Mary In The Late Medieval And Reformation Eras (Part 2)

People have taken a lot of different positions on the perpetual virginity of Mary. A wide variety of views is found in the historical record during the timeframes I'm addressing. You could believe that Mary didn't have sexual intercourse, but reject her virginity in partu. You could believe in her perpetual virginity, yet not think that rejecting it makes somebody a non-Christian. You could affirm her perpetual virginity or oppose it to different degrees. You could be agnostic on the subject. And so on.

This post will discuss some examples of individuals who opposed the perpetual virginity of Mary. The next post will address sources who took other positions that are significant in one way or another.

In a recent debate with TurretinFan, William Albrecht referred to how belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary was "unanimous" among the church fathers, was required to be an orthodox Christian in the early church, and was challenged by "none" of the proto-Reformers or early Reformers. Later, he says that it's not until "later history" (after the time of the magisterial Reformers) that the perpetual virginity of Mary is denied.

Another Catholic, Dwight Longenecker, wrote:

From the very earliest times therefore, Mary’s virginity (which was a physical sign of her spiritual character) was assumed to have continued until her death....

We Catholics defend this belief in solidarity not only with the whole of the early church, but also with virtually the whole of orthodox Christendom down through the ages. The Perpetual Virginity of Mary is a beautiful and fitting belief upheld by the Eastern Orthodox as well as many Anglicans and Lutherans. Furthermore, it was defended not only by the ancient Church fathers, but by Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and the classic Anglican theologians....

Wow! The ease with which you dismiss fifteen hundred years of virtually unanimous Church teaching is breath-taking. So the modern Evangelical waves his hand and says with a straight face, “You see, everybody (including our own founding fathers) had it wrong for the first fifteen hundred years…” And this from the folks who accuse Catholics of altering the historic faith with later distortions!...

Tertullian’s is the only voice from the early church that suggests such a thing [that Mary wasn't a perpetual virgin].

I've addressed the Biblical, ancient extrabiblical, patristic, and early medieval evidence in many previous posts, like here, here, and here. And you can access an archive of some of our posts on the perpetual virginity of Mary here. Click Older Posts in the bottom right to see more after you go to that page. You can find other relevant posts by searching our archives.

As my last post explained, what I want to do in this series is discuss opposition to the perpetual virginity of Mary and other relevant views in the late medieval and Reformation eras. You can read my last post, linked above, for more about some background issues (the evidential value of different extrabiblical sources, how familiar I am with late medieval and Reformation sources, responses to potential objections to this series, etc.).

I'll begin with sources who either were heretical or have significant potential to have been heretical. In some ways, they're inferior to sources who are known to have been orthodox. But they have some degree of significance (refuting a claim that nobody held a particular view during the timeframe in question, showing the diversity of sources who held a particular view, etc.). Go here to watch William Albrecht discussing, with Suan Sonna nodding his head in agreement, the value of citing heterodox sources in support of the Assumption of Mary.

Writing of some individuals in the first half of the fifteenth century, Thomas Fudge refers to how one of their beliefs was "that the Blessed Virgin Mary had children other than Jesus" and, concerning some others, "The virginity of Mary is set aside by the Pikarts who accept she had other children." (Heresy And Hussites In Late Medieval Europe [New York, New York: Routledge, 2019], approximate Kindle locations 3617, 3857) Some anti-Trinitarian views are among the beliefs held by these people, but I don't know whether every one of the individuals in question held those views. Likewise, I don't know how many of them rejected Mary's perpetual virginity. But there's a rejection of it among these individuals to some extent.

Moving to non-heretical sources, John Edward, a Lollard of the late fifteenth century, held the view that Mary had another son after Jesus' ascension (D.P. Wright, ed., The Register Of Thomas Langton Bishop Of Salisbury 1485-93 [Canterbury And York Society, 1985], 76). I don't know how he reached that conclusion, but the best explanation that comes to mind is Acts 12:12. The Mary of chapter 12 is the only Mary mentioned in Acts after the reference to Jesus' mother in 1:14. The Mary in chapter 12 is a prominent one living in a house familiar to and used by Peter and other Christians. She's mentioned as the one whose house it is without any reference to a husband, which suggests her prominence or widowhood. Edward may have mistaken the Mary of chapter 12 for Jesus' mother for one or more of those reasons. Since the John Mark mentioned in that context isn't mentioned in the gospel accounts that name Jesus' brothers, Edward may have estimated that John Mark was born sometime after Jesus' ascension (presumably by a second husband of Mary). Some church fathers and other sources over the years have confused one Mary with another, such as Ephraem the Syrian's confusing Mary Magdalene with Jesus' mother (Michael O'Carroll, Theotokos [Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1988], 132-33). I'm not citing Edward's belief that Mary had another child so late in life because I agree with it. I don't. Rather, I'm citing it because it's a form of rejection of the perpetual virginity of Mary. As O'Carroll explains in his material on Ephraem cited above, Ephraem attributed doubt about Jesus' resurrection to Jesus' mother in the process of confusing her with Mary Magdalene. His attributing doubt to the mother of Jesus tells us something about how he viewed her, even though he was confusing her with somebody else in the process. The situation with Edward seems to be of a similar nature.

The information I've cited about Edward comes from the register of Thomas Langton. There's another entry in the register about Joan Vorde. The description of the entry at the top of the page refers to "heresies touching the continuing virginity of the B.V.M." and other subjects ("the worthiness of priests in deadly sin, and the Lord's Prayer"). (63) Part of her confession and abjuration reads, "Firste that I shulde say that our lorde Jesu cryste was never conceyvede of and born of our blyssede Lady mary she remaynyng in her virginite (blank - ? words erased for half a line)." The record then moves on to other issues. So, the part about Mary's virginity is incomplete, and what's there has some significant ambiguity. Vorde clearly denied Mary's perpetual virginity. But to what extent? Did she deny that Mary was a virgin even at the time of Jesus' conception? I doubt it. The Lollards and others closely affiliated with them were generally orthodox by our typical standards today, including on the virginal conception. Vorde would be an exception to the rule if she rejected Mary's virginity at the time when Jesus was conceived. And the other charges brought against her are relatively minor, so a denial of the virginal conception wouldn't sit well with that surrounding context. I think it's most likely that she accepted the virginal conception, but denied Mary's later virginity, perhaps with the mention of Jesus' birth being intended to convey a denial of Mary's virginity in partu, not a denial that she was still avoiding sexual intercourse up to the time of the birth (which Matthew 1:25 affirms and Vorde would be unlikely to deny).

The incompleteness of Vorde's trial record underscores a larger issue that should be reiterated here. See my earlier post here on the subject of the incompleteness of such heresy trials. That post cites Marian doctrines as examples of how incomplete the records are. When I cite the records of Thomas Langton, one bishop in one region whose register covers less than a decade, that register doesn't reflect the interests of everybody who oversaw heresy trials in every context. Different church leaders had different interests and wrote under different circumstances in other ways. A subject that was of a lot of interest to one church leader may have been of much less interest to another. Langton's register doesn't say much about the beliefs of heretics at the time covered by the register. If it happened to mention a couple different individuals who denied the perpetual virginity of Mary in that small region during that small timeframe, there surely were far more people across the world around that time who held that view. As Norman Tanner explains in another book about heresy trials in another context, "In short, the information comes to us largely through the eyes and according to the priorities of the prosecution, and Warham's [the Roman Catholic archbishop's] first priority seems to have been to secure convictions on a relatively small number of charges where heresy was clear-cut, not to enter into the defendants' beliefs at all fully or sympathetically." (Kent Heresy Proceedings 1511-12 [England: Kent Archaeological Society, 1997], xiv)

Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote:

"The Reformation had turned back to Scripture, and one obvious issue to rethink was the proposition about Mary most insecurely supported therein: her perpetual virginity. Any reader coming fresh to the appropriate references in the Biblical text would draw the conclusion that Jesus had brothers and sisters, and that is the conclusion that many readers did come to in the 1520s: so in May 1525 an unidentified radical, probably Conrad Grebel [an Anabaptist], scandalized the town leadership of St Gallen because he 'slandered Our Lady with seven children'." (R.N. Swanson, ed., The Church And Mary [Suffolk, England: The Boydell Press, 2004], 205-206)

The number seven probably comes from the gospels' references to four brothers of Jesus and the plural "sisters" (Matthew 13:55-56, Mark 6:3). If you add up Jesus, four brothers, and the minimum of two sisters, you get seven.