Queen of Heaven
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Queen of Heaven is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Roman Catholicism. It may also refer to a goddess of antiquity or to a Christian hymn.
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[edit] Christianity
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Queen of Heaven (Latin Regina Cæli) is one of a number of titles used particularly in the Roman Catholic Church for Mary, the mother of Jesus. The title is with reference to the Catholic dogma that at the end of her earthly life, Mary was bodily assumed into heaven, and is there honoured as Queen, for the sake of her Son. This follows the biblical precedent of ancient Israel, whose crown, it is held in Christianity, has passed to Jesus.
Luke 1:32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David.
In the Old Testament kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the King might, like David or Solomon, have many wives. The title of Queen, therefore went not to any wife of the king, but to the mother of the king. 1 Kings 2 17-21, 1 Kings 15:13, Jeremiah 13:18. The Queen Mother was known in Hebrew as the gebirah. Since Jesus is heavenly king, of the lineage of David and Solomon, Mary becomes Queen Mother.
The church also sees Mary crowned as queen in heaven in Revelation 12, verses 1-5.
[edit] Christian hymn
The Regina Cœli (Queen of Heaven) is an anthem of the Roman Catholic Church which replaces the Angelus at Eastertide (from Holy Saturday until the Saturday after Pentecost); it is named for its opening words in Latin:
- Regina coeli laetare, alleluia,
- Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia,
- Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia.
- Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.
- Queen of Heaven rejoice, alleluia;
- For the Son thou wast privileged to bear, alleluia;
- Is risen as He said,alleluia:
- Pray for us to God, alleluia.
Of unknown authorship, the anthem was in Franciscan use in the first half of the 13th century. Together with three other Marian anthems, it was incorporated in the Minorite Roman Curia Office, which the Franciscans soon popularized everywhere, and which by order of Pope Nicholas III (1277-1280) replaced all the older breviaries in the churches of Rome.
The Marian anthems run the gamut of medieval literary styles, from the classical hexameters of the Alma Redemptoris Mater through the richly-rhymed accentual rhythm and regular strophes of the Ave Regina Coelorum, the irregular syntonic strophe of the "Regina Coeli", to the sonorous prose rhythms (with rhyming closes) of the Salve Regina. "In the 16th century, the antiphons of our Lady were employed to replace the little office at all the hours" (Baudot, The Roman Breviary, 1909, p. 71).
The authorship of the Regina Cæli being unknown, a pious legend to connect it with Gregory the Great (d. 604) has the first three lines chanted by angels on a certain Easter morning in Rome while Gregory, walking barefoot in a great religious procession, followed the icon of the Virgin painted by Luke the Evangelist, and that the saint thereupon added the fourth line: "Ora pro nobis Deum. Alleluia." (See also Salve Regina).
There are plainsong melodies (a simple and an ornate form) associated with Regina Cæli the official or "typical" melody being found in the Vatican Antiphonary, 1911, p. 126. The antiphonal strophes of Regina Cæli were often set by polyphonic composers of the 16th century. There is a setting by the young Mozart, K. 127.
[edit] Fertile Crescent religions
Queen of Heaven is a natural title for goddesses central to many religions of antiquity. In Sumer Inanna was hailed as "Queen of Heaven" in the 3rd millennium BCE. In Akkad to the north, she was worshipped later as Ishtar. In the Sumerian Descent of Inanna, when Inanna is challenged at the outermost gates of the underworld, she replies
- 'I am Inanna, Queen of Heaven,
- On my way to the East.'
Her cult was deeply embedded in Mesopotamia and among the Canaanites to the west. In the early 6th Century BCE, the neighbors of the Israelites still worshipped the Queen of Heaven, and the temptation for the Hebrews to follow her cult was apparently hard to resist. Jeremiah, writing ca. 590-580,
- "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger." (Jeremiah 7:18)
To this, the Israelite women replied :
44:16 [As for] the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD,
we will not hearken unto thee.
44:17 But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth,
to burn incense unto the queen of heaven,
and to pour out drink offerings unto her,
as we have done,
we,
and our fathers,
our kings,
and our princes,
in the cities of Judah,
and in the streets of Jerusalem:
for [then] had we plenty of victuals,
and were well,
and saw no evil.
44:18 But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven,
and to pour out drink offerings unto her,
we have wanted all [things],
and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
44:19 And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven,
and poured out drink offerings unto her,
did we make her cakes to worship her,
and pour out drink offerings unto her,
without our men?
Jeremiah continued (44:25)
- 'Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, saying: Ye and your wives have both spoken with your mouths, and fulfilled with your hand, saying, We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her: ye will surely accomplish your vows, and surely perform your vows.'
[edit] References
- The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912.
This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia.
