It is, I think, about 886, that we first find the effigy of the Virgin on the coins of the Greek empire.  On a gold coin of Leo VI., the Philosopher, she stands veiled, and draped, with a noble head, no glory, and the arms outspread, just as she appears in the old mosaics.  On a coin of Romanus the Younger, she crowns the emperor, having herself the nimbus; she is draped and veiled.  On a coin of Nicephorus Phocus (who had great pretensions to piety), the Virgin stands, presenting a cross to the emperor, with the inscription, “Theotokos, be propitious.”  On a gold coin of John Zimisces, 975, we first find the Virgin and Child,—­the symbol merely:  she holds against her bosom a circular glory, within which is the head of the Infant Christ.  In the successive reigns of the next two centuries, she almost constantly appears as crowning the emperor.

Returning to the West, we find that in the succeeding period, from Charlemagne to the first crusade, the popular devotion to the Virgin, and the multiplication of sacred pictures, continued steadily to increase; yet in the tenth and eleventh centuries art was at its lowest ebb.  At this time, the subjects relative to the Virgin were principally the Madonna and Child, represented according to the Greek form; and those scenes from the Gospel in which she is introduced, as the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Worship of the Magi.

Towards the end of the tenth century the custom of adding the angelic salutation, the “Ave Maria,” to the Lord’s prayer, was first introduced; and by the end of the following century, it had been adopted in the offices of the Church.  This was, at first, intended as a perpetual reminder of the mystery of the Incarnation, as announced by the angel.  It must have had the effect of keeping the idea of Mary as united with that of her Son, and as the instrument of the Incarnation, continually in the minds of the people.

The pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and the crusades in the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, had a most striking effect on religious art, though this effect was not fully evolved till a century later.  More particularly did this returning wave of Oriental influences modify the representations of the Virgin.  Fragments of the apocryphal gospels and legends of Palestine and Egypt were now introduced, worked up into ballads, stories, and dramas, and gradually incorporated with the teaching of the Church.  A great variety of subjects derived from the Greek artists, and from particular localities and traditions of the East, became naturalized in Western Europe, Among these were the legends of Joachim and Anna; and the death, the assumption, and the coronation of the Virgin.