on the dedication of the costly altar of the church of St. Sophia he expected all blessings for church and empire from her powerful prayers. His general, Narses, like the knights in the Middle Age, was unwilling to go into battle till he had secured her protection. Pope Boniface IV. in 608 tui-ned the Pantheon in Rome into a temple of Mary ad mar- tyres : the pagan Olympus into a Christian heaven of gods. Subsequently even her images (made after an original pretend- ing to- have come from Luke) were divinely worshipped, and, in tfie prolific legends of the supei-stitious Middle Age, per- formed countless miracles, before some of which the miracles of the gospel history grow dim. She became almost coordi- nate with Christ, a joint redeemer, invested with most of His own attributes and acts of grace. The popular belief ascribed to her, as to Christ, a sinless conception, a sinless birth, resur- rection and ascension to heaven, and a participation of all power in heaven and on' earth. She became the centre of de- ' Adv. Heer. Collyrid. : 'Ev nup iarw Mapia, 6 5e HoTjjp . . . TrposKvvflaisiv, rijv Maoiav urjSfls tt po s Kvve it cmj 424: THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590. votion, cultns, and art, the popular symbol of power, of glory, and of the final victory of Catholicism over all heresies.' The Greek and Eoman churches vied throughout the Middle Age (and do so still) in the apotheosis of the human mother with the divine-human child Jesus in her arms, till the Reformation freed a large part of Latin Christendom from this unscriptural semi-idolatry and concentrated the afiection and adoration of believers upon the crucified and risen Saviour of the world, the only Mediator between God and man. A word more : respecting the favorite prayer to Mary, the angelic greeting, or the Ave Maria, which in the Catholic de- votion runs parallel to the Pater Noster. It takes its name from the initial words of the salutation of Gabriel to the hoiy Yii'gin at the annunciation of the birth of Christ. It consists of three parts : (1) The salutation of the angel (Luke i. 28) : Ave Maria, gratice plena, Dominus tecum! (2) The words of Elizabetli (Luke i. 42) : Benedicta tu in muUeribus,^ et henedictus fructus vent/ris tui, Jesus. (3) The later unscriptural addition, which contains the prayer proper, and is ofifensive to the Protestant and all sound Christian feeling : Sancta Maria, mater Dei, oraiwo nobis ijeccatorihus, nunc et i/n hora mortis. . Amen. Formerly this third part, which gave the formula the char- acter of a prayer, was traced back to the anli-Nestorian council of Ephesus in 431, which sanctioned the expression mater Dei, or Dei genitrix {SeoroKos:). But Eoman archaeologists ' now concede that it is a much later addition, made in the beginning of the sixteenth century (1508), and tliat the closing words, ' The Greek churcb even goes so far as to substitute,