​IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, THE. This dogma of theRoman Catholic Church was defined, as “of faith” by PopePius IX. on the 8th of December 1854 in the following terms:“The doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, fromthe first instant of her conception, was, by a most singulargrace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits ofJesus Christ, the Redeemer of the human race, preserved fromall stain of Original Sin, is a doctrine revealed, by God, and thereforeto be firmly and steadfastly believed by all the faithful.”^[1]These words presuppose the distinction between original, orracial, and actual, or personally incurred sin. There is no disputethat the Church has always held the Blessed Virgin to besinless, in the sense of actual or personal sin. The questionof the Immaculate Conception regards original or racial sin only.It is admitted that the doctrine as defined by Pius IX. was notexplicitly mooted before the 12th century. But it is claimedthat it is implicitly contained in the teaching of the Fathers.Their expressions on the subject of the sinlessness of Mary are,it is pointed out, so ample and so absolute that they must betaken to include original sin as well as actual. Thus we havein the first five centuries such epithets applied to her as “inevery respect holy,” “in all things unstained,” “super-innocent”and “singularly holy”; she is compared to Eve before thefall, as ancestress of a redeemed people; she is “the earthbefore it was accursed.”^[2] The well-known words of St Augustine(d. 430) may be cited: “As regards the mother of God,”he says, “I will not allow any question whatever of sin.”^[3]It is true that he is here speaking directly of actual or personalsin. But his argument is that all men are sinners; that theyare so through original depravity; that this original depravitymay be overcome by the grace of God, and he adds that he doesnot know but that Mary may have had sufficient grace to overcomesin “of every sort” (omni ex parte).

It seems to have been St Bernard who, in the 12th century,explicitly raised the question of the Immaculate Conception.A feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin had alreadybegun to be celebrated in some churches of the West. StBernard blames the canons of the metropolitan church of Lyonsfor instituting such a festival without the permission of the HolySee. In doing so, he takes occasion to repudiate altogetherthe view that the Conception of Mary was sinless. It is doubtful,however, whether he was using the term “Conception” in thesame sense in which it is used in the definition of Pius IX. Inspeaking of conception one of three things may be meant:(1) the mother’s co-operation; (2) the formation of the body,or (3) the completion of the human being by the infusionof the rational or spiritual soul. In early times conception wasvery commonly used in the first sense—“active” conceptionas it was called. But it is in the second, or rather the third,sense that the word is employed in modern usage, and in thedefinition of Pope Pius IX. But St Bernard would seem tohave been speaking of conception in the first sense, for in hisargument he says, “How can there be absence of sin wherethere is concupiscence (libido)?” and stronger expressionsfollow, showing that he is speaking of the mother and not ofthe child.^[4]

St Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval scholastics,refused to admit the Immaculate Conception, on the ground that,unless the Blessed Virgin had at one time or other been one ofthe sinful, she could not justly be said to have been redeemedby Christ.^[5] St Bonaventura (d. 1274), second only to St Thomasin his influence on the Christian schools of his age, hesitatedto accept it for a similar reason.^[6] The celebrated John DunsScotus (d. 1308), a Franciscan like St Bonaventura, argued,on the contrary, that from a rational point of view it wascertainly as little derogatory to the merits of Christ to assert thatMary was by him preserved from all taint of sin, as to say thatshe first contracted it and then was delivered.^[7] His arguments,combined with a better acquaintance with the language of theearly Fathers, gradually prevailed in the schools of the WesternChurch. In 1387 the university of Paris strongly condemnedthe opposite view. In 1483 Pope Sixtus IV., who had already(1476) emphatically approved of the feast of the Conception,condemned those who ventured to assert that the doctrine ofthe Immaculate Conception was heretical, and forbade eitherside to claim a decisive victory until further action on the partof the Holy See. The council of Trent, after declaring that inits decrees on the subject of original sin it did not include “theblessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God,” renewedthis prohibition.^[8] Pope Paul V. (d. 1651) ordered that no one,under severe penalties, should dare to assent in public “acts”or disputations that the Blessed Virgin was conceived in originalsin. Pope Gregory XV., shortly afterwards, extended thisprohibition to private discussions, allowing, however, theDominicans to argue on the subjects among themselves.Clement XI., in 1708, extended the feast of the Conceptionto the whole Church as a holy day of obligation. Long beforethe middle of the 19th century the doctrine was universallytaught in the Roman Catholic Church. During the reign ofGregory XVI. the bishops in various countries began to pressfor a definition. Pius IX., at the beginning of his pontificate,and again after 1851, appointed commissions to investigate thewhole subject, and he was advised that the doctrine was one ​which could be defined and that the time for a definition wasopportune. On the 8th of December 1854 in a great assemblyof bishops, in the basilica of St Peter’s at Rome, he promulgatedthe BullIneffabilis Deus, in which the history of the doctrineis summarily traced, and which contains the definition as givenabove.

The festival of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, as distinctfrom her Nativity, was certainly celebrated in the Greek Churchin the 7th century, as we learn from one of the canons of StAndrew of Crete (or of Jerusalem) who died aboutA.D. 700.^[9]There is some evidence that it was kept in Spain in the time ofSt Ildefonsus of Toledo (d. 667) and in southern Italy beforeA.D. 1000. In England it was known in the 12th century; acouncil of the province of Canterbury, in 1328, ascribes itsintroduction to St Anselm. It spread to France and Germanyin the same century. It was extended to the whole church, asstated above, in 1708. It is kept, in the Western Church, on the8th of December; the Greeks have always kept it one day later.