The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectress from Goddess to Saint - Softcover

Berger, Pamela C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807067237 ISBN 13: 9780807067239

Publisher: Beacon Press, 1988

Synopsis

Recounts the story of the grain protectress, an image that has persisted from the ancient Near East to the classical world and still survives in folksongs and village celebrations today.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

As pagan peoples turned to Christianity, many of them reformulated their belief in an ancient earth-mother goddess into a more acceptable, Christianized form. The Virgin Mary was transformed into a protectress of crops; the popular Grain Miracle legend asserted that she caused incredible plant fertility while carrying the infant Jesus during the Flight into Egypt. Her fecund powers were celebrated in Welsh legends, Irish poems, plays and carols, folktales and mimes, murals and illuminated manuscripts. Behind the image of the earth goddess was the Great Mother worshipped by ancient peoples from Greece and the Near East to the Germanic North. Berger, an art history professor at Boston College, shows how powers associated with the fertility deity were projected onto the Virgin, female saints and such folk figures as Bessey of Plow Monday, demons and "crazy mothers." Richly illustrated, her brilliant and absorbing study illuminates the ways deep-rooted beliefs and practices can persist into modern times.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0807067237
• ISBN 13: 9780807067239
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 188