but was opposed by Ber- nard of Clairvaux (Ep. 174), and thence continued an avowed issue between the Franciscans and Dominicans, till it gained the victory in the papal bull of 1854. 420 THKRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. appear no clear traces of a proper worship of Mary, as distinct ii'oni tlie worship of saints in general', until the Nestorian con- troversy of 430. This dispute formed an important turning- point not only in Clnistology, but in Mariology also. The leading interest in it was, without donbt, the connection of the virgin with the mystery of the incarnation. The perfect union of the divine and human natures seemed to demand that Mary might be called in some sense the mother of God, ^eoroKo^;, Deipara / for that which was born of her was not merely the man Jesus, but the God-Man Jesus Christ.' The church, how- ever, did, of course, not intend by that to assert that she was the mother of the uncreated divine essence — for this would be palpably absurd and blasphemous — nor that she herself was divine, but only that she was the human point of entrance or the mysterious channel for the eternal divine Logos. Athanasius and the Alexandrian church teachers of the Nicene age, who pressed the unity of the divine and the human in Christ to the verge of monophysitism,.had already used this expression fre- quently and without scruple,* and Gregory iNTazianzen even declares every one impious who denies its validity.' IS'esto- rius, on the contrary, and the Antiochian school, who were more devoted to the distinction of the two natures in Christ, • ^ The expression ^eoTo'/cos does not occur in the Scriptures, and is at best easily misunderstood. The nearest to it is the expression of Ehzabeth : 'H ^■k'^-np rov Kvpiov fxov, Luke i. 43, and the words of the angel Gabriel: To yivvwayavov [eV (ToC, de te, al. in te, is not sufficiently attested, and is a later explanatory addition] ayiov /cA7j&7)(r€Toi vlbs Qeov, Luke i. 35. But 'with what right the distinguished Ro- man Catholic professor Reithmayr, in the Cathohc Encyclop. above quoted, vol. vi. p. 844, puts into the mouth of Ehzabeth the expression, " mother of God my Lord," I cannot see ; for there is no such variation in the reading of Luke i. 43. ^ The earliest witnesses for ^eoroKos are Origen (according to Socrates, H.E. vii. 32), Eusebius (Vita Const, iii. 43), Cyril of Jerus. (Catech. x. 146), Athanasius (Orat. iii. c. Arian. c. 14, 33), Didymus (De Trinit. i. 31, 94; ii,4, 133), and Gregory Naz. (Orat. li. 738). But it should be remembered that Hesychius, presbyter in Jerusa- lem (f 343) calls David, as an ancestor of Christ, aeoTrarcop (Photius, Cod. 2*75), and that in many apocrypha James is called adeXcpoSieos (Gieseler, i. ii. 134). It is also worthy of note that Augustine (f 430), with all his reverence for Mary, never calls her mater Dei or Deipara ; on the