Marianismo
""Marianismo"" originally referred to the devotion to Mary (). The term was first used by political scientist Evelyn Stevens in her 1973 essay ""Marianismo": The Other Face of "Machismo"". It was in direct response to the male word "machismo" and was meant to explain the phenomenon in Latin America in which women were either "saints or whores". It is the supposed ideal of true femininity that women are supposed to live up to—i.e. being modest, virtuous, and sexually abstinent until marriage—and then being faithful and subordinate to their husbands. In essence, marianismo is the female counterpart to machismo, and as such, probably originated during the time of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
History of Catholic Mariology
The majority of Western Marian writers during this period belonged to the monastic tradition, particularly the Benedictines. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw an extraordinary growth of the cult of the Virgin in western Europe, in part inspired by the writings of theologians such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). Bernard of Clairvaux was one of the most influential churchmen of his time. In the "Sermon on the Sunday in the Octave of the Assumption" he described Mary's participation in redemption. Bernard's "Praises on the Virgin Mother" was a small but complete treatise on Mariology. Pope Pius XII's 1953 encyclical "Doctor Mellifluus", issued in commemoration of the eighth centenary of Bernard's death, quotes extensively from Bernard's sermon on Mary as "Our Lady, Star of the Sea".