But in the Church traditions and enactments, another character was, from the fifth century, assigned to her, out of which grew the theological type, very beautiful and exalted, but absorbing to a great degree the scriptural and moral type, and substituting for the merely human attributes others borrowed from her relation to the great scheme of redemption; for it was contended that, as the mother of the Divine, she could not be herself less than divine; consequently above the angels, and first of all created beings.  According to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, her tender woman’s wisdom became supernatural gifts; the beautiful humility was changed into a knowledge of her own predestined glory; and, being raised bodily into immortality, and placed beside her Son, in all “the sacred splendour of beneficence,” she came to be regarded as our intercessor before that divine Son, who could refuse nothing to his mother.  The relative position of the Mother and Son being spiritual and indestructible was continued in heaven; and thus step by step the woman was transmuted into the divinity.

But, like her Son, Mary had walked in human form upon earth, and in form must have resembled her Son; for, as it is argued, Christ had no earthly father, therefore could only have derived his human lineaments from his mother.  All the old legends assume that the resemblance between the Son and the Mother must have been perfect.  Dante alludes to this belief: 

  “Riguarda ormai nella faccia ch’ a Christo
  Piu s’ assomiglia.”

  “Now raise thy view
  Unto the visage most resembling Christ.”

The accepted type of the head of Christ was to be taken as a model in its mild, intellectual majesty, for that of the Virgin-mother, as far as difference of sex would allow.

In the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Gallixtus, he has inserted a description of the person of Mary, which he declares to have been given by Epiphanius, who lived in the fourth century, and by him derived from a more ancient source.  It must be confessed, that the type of person here assigned to the Virgin is more energetic for a woman than that which has been assigned to our Saviour as a man.  “She was of middle stature; her face oval; her eyes brilliant, and of an olive tint; her eyebrows arched and black; her hair was of a pale brown; her complexion fair as wheat.  She spoke little, but she spoke freely and affably; she was not troubled in her speech, but grave, courteous, tranquil.  Her dress was without ornament, and in her deportment was nothing lax or feeble.”  To this ancient description of her person and manners, we are to add the scriptural and popular portrait of her mind; the gentleness, the purity, the intellect, power, and fortitude; the gifts of the poetess and prophetess; the humility in which she exceeded all womankind.  Lastly, we are to engraft on these personal and moral qualities, the theological attributes which the Church, from