The Coronation of Our Lady

Today is a Marian feast. Which one it is will depend on which calendar you choose to follow. In the EF it is the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary falling on the Octave Day of the Assumption. In the OF it is the Queenship of Our Lady, replacing the feast of the Coronation of Our Lady on May 31st at the end of Mary’s month of May. That was instituted in 1954 by Pope Pius XII, but based, of course, on a centuries old understanding of Our Lady’s place in Heaven. Some of us, force majeure, end up following a hybrid calendar.  In this case I can see a definite logic in celebrating the Coronation as the conclusion of Assumptiontide and the chronological unity that conveys.

The history of the feast is set out by Wikipedia in an article which also looks at the way the Coronation has been depicted. From that accont I am reproducing a section:

The subject seems to first appear in art, unusually, in England, where f. 102v in the Benedictional of St Æthelwold (963-984), for the Feast of the Assumption, shows the death and Coronation of the Virgin, possibly the first Western depiction. 

The next examples it gives are also English. The church of St Swithin at Quenington in Gloucestershire has over the south door dated to circa 1140 a tympanum with the Coronation.

The Quenington tympanum

Image: englishbuildings.blogspot.com

For more information about the sculpture see the English Buildings blog at Quenington, Gloucestershire and there is more about the church at Quenington

From about the same date is a cloister capital from Reading Abbey which is illustrated and discussed at Reading Museum

The Wikipedia article continues with a survey of the way the Coronation of the Virgin was depicted in the high and later middle ages and in the High Renaissance and Baroque with a fine selection of examples - although the images are unfortunately a little out of focus. Most of these are Italian, which continued the French sculptural tradition of Christ and Mary seated side by side on a wide throne, as opposed to a more Trinitarian emphasis, but also with a few German and Swedish examples. These can all be seen at Coronation of the Virgin

May Our Lady Queen of Heaven Pray for us