MARY OF HISTORY

What do we really know about the woman we call Mother of God and Mother of the Church? What does history tell us about Mary? Mary was actually called Miriam, after the sister of Moses. She was likely born in Nazareth, a tiny Galilean town of about 1,600 people during the reign of Herod the Great, a violent puppet king backed by Roman military might. Mary was of the Jewish culture and she spoke Aramaic with a Galilean accent. Mary had contact with the multilingual world. She heard Latin as it slipped past the tongues of the Roman soldiers, Greek was used in commerce and educated circles, and Hebrew as the Torah proclaimed in the synagogue. Mary belonged to the peasant class, which made up ninety percent of the population, which bore the burden of supporting the state and the privileged class. Their life was grinding with a triple tax, one to Romans, one to King Herod, and ten percent of the harvest to the temple. Mary most likely spent ten hours a day doing domestic chores. This information came from a Catholic Update on Mary of History 2008.