De Sales also denies the Virgin an active role at the cross.
Finally, de Sales asserts that the Virgin was silent at Calvary.
He says, "I indeed believe that the tongues of both were as mute because of such great sorrow, and that they were able to speak either not at all or only a little; but nevertheless the natural affection of the son was able to say a great deal to the heart of the Virgin.
No one knows of it except he who suffered them and the holy Virgin Our Lady, who was at the foot of the cross, to whom undoubtedly he communicated them and who pondered them within herself.
As we shall see, she is, in the end, closer to the Virgin traditionally put forward as the image of proper female deportment.
Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, the Virgin Mary has served, along with her son, as a convenient role model for the Christian life.
When the Virgin visited Elizabeth, she hastened to her house as soon as possible to shorten her exposure to the eyes of the world.
So we find that the public portrait of the Virgin as quiet and secluded remains a constant during a period in which the account of her behavior during the Passion is undergoing a marked change.
Is there any place in the sermon literature where the Virgin resembles at all the actual lives of women who listened to public sermons?
Undoubtedly, one of the factors that led to a revised portrait of the Virgin at the cross was the need to respond to Protestant charges of "excesses" and lack of adherence to Scripture in earlier Catholic piety and preaching.
Overall, however, this humanist influence on the structure and content of sermons appears to have had only a limited impact on the passionate popular sermons, examined here, that continued to be devoted to the Virgin Mary.
Also, in light of some of the enthusiastic claims that preachers continued to make about Mary in other sermons, why would they single out the Virgin of the Passion for such great alteration?
99) This suspicion manifested itself in cultural realms as diverse as witchcraft trials, art works, and Cartesian epistemology; and it provides one more reason why portrayals of the Virgin would prefer to dwell on her soul and inner emotions rather than her body.
What place is left for the Virgin Mary to fill in the midst of so much anxiety about women; and how might she have been used as another means to control them?