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In answer to my original question, Larry Clopper wrote: >I would assume that the commentator on the historical sense of scripture, >Nicholas of Lyra , would be very much aware of Mary's Jewishness. Also >the NT genealogies trace Mary's and Joseph's families to OT figures. The >Marian plays in the N-Town cycle reproduce Jewish ritual in some detail. >Mary is clearly a Jew there, as she is when she and Joseph offer the >doves at the Purification/Presentation. > > Larry Clopper I appreciate and understand that there was a *knowledge* of the Jewishness of Mary and Jesus. I'm not sure this is the same as an *awareness*. I know that sounds daft, so let me try to explain: When Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Circumcision, or the Epiphany, or even, to an extent, Easter, we are celebrating jewish ritual and custom. I know this, but it doesn't really impinge on my feeling that these are "really" Catholic feasts. In the same way, I wonder if medieval Christians felt, rather than knew, that Jesus and Mary were "really" Christian, even though the historical fact, available at the time, was that they were not. It might have something to do with the fact that "the Jews" were set up as binary opposites to Christ, not just in the Bible, but in religious education. Theologians and bible-commentators would have had great experience of these problems, but I wonder what they meant to the ordinary parish clergy, or even to the devout guildsman? As a member of the last generation of Irish Catholics to be brought up with pre-Vatican II mores, I find that it is possible to hold these two ideas -that of Christ being Jewish, but not "really" - separately, and not let one interfere with the other. This is not to belittle religious feeling in any way, and I may be speaking only for myself, but I have the feeling that Irish Catholicism may be closer to late medieval devotion than anybody likes to admit. If Im talking a load of rubbish, just tell me and I'll shut up. Le Gach dea-ghui Tony Corbett