158 TABOO AND GENETICS 



and Chrysostom, made frequent use in their 

 writings of the term Theotokos, Mother of God. 

 When Nestorius attacked those who worshipped 

 the infant Christ as a god and Mary as the 

 mother of God rather than as the mother of 

 Christ, a duel began between Cyril of Alexandria 

 and Nestorius " which in fierceness and import- 

 ance can only be compared with that between 

 Arius and Athanasius." (19.) 



In 431 A. D. the Universal Church Council 

 at Ephesus assented to the doctrine that Mary 

 was the Mother of God. Thus Ephesus, home 

 of the great Diana, from primitive times the 

 centre of the worship of a goddess who united 

 in herself the virtues of virginity and mother- 

 hood, could boast of being the birthplace of the 

 Madonna cult. And thus Mary, our Lad}^ of 

 Sorrows, pure and undefiled, " the church's 

 paradox," became the ideal of man. She was 

 " a woman, virgin and mother, sufficiently high 

 to be worshipped, yet sufficiently near to be 

 reached by affection. ... If we judge myths 

 as artistic creations we must recognize that no 

 god or goddess has given its worshippers such 

 an ideal as the Mary of Christian art and poetry." 

 (19 : p. 183.) (20 : v. ii., pp. 22of.) 



Although Christianity thus took over and 

 embodied in its doctrines the cult of the mother- 

 goddess, at the same time it condemned all the 

 rites which had accompanied the worship of the 



