They were men; they could fight;
and in those troublous times that is exactly what saints were made for.
With the softening of manners a new element appears. Male saints lost
their chief raison d'etre, and these virile creatures were superseded
by pacific women. So, to give only one instance, Saint Rosalia in
Palermo displaced the former protector Saint Mark. Her sacred bones were
miraculously discovered in a cave; and have since been identified as
those of a goat. But it was not till the twelfth century that the cult
of female saints began to assume imposing dimensions.
Of the Madonna no mention occurs in the songs of Bishop Paulinus (fourth
century); no monument exists in the Neapolitan catacombs. Thereafter her
cult begins to dominate.
She supplied the natives with what orthodox Christianity did not give
them, but what they had possessed from early times - a female element in
religion. Those Greek settlers had their nymphs, their Venus, and so
forth; the Mother of God absorbed and continued their functions. There
is indeed only one of these female pagan divinities whose role she has
not endeavoured to usurp - Athene. Herein she reflects the minds of her
creators, the priests and common people, whose ideal woman contents
herself with the duties of motherhood.
