Queen of Heaven
The Roman Catholic teaching that Mary is far above all other creatures in dignity, and after Jesus Christ possesses primacy over all goes back to the early church. Saint Sophronius said: "You have surpassed every creature" and Saint Germain of Paris (469–576) stated: "Your honor and dignity surpass the whole of creation; your greatness places you above the angels." Saint John of Damascus went further: "Limitless is the difference between God's servants and His Mother."
The feast of the Queenship of Mary was only formally established in 1954 by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam. Pius XII also declare the first Marian year and a number of Roman Catholic Church rededications took place, e.g. the 1955 rededication of the church of Saint James the Great in Montreal with the new title Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral a title proclaimed by Pius XII.
Yet, long before 1954 the Coronation of the Virgin had been the subject of a good number of artistic works. Some of these paintings built on the third phase of the Assumption of Mary in which following her Assumption, she is crowned as the Queen of Heaven.
Read more about this topic: Marian Art In The Catholic Church
Famous quotes containing the words queen of, queen and/or heaven:
“In my end is my beginning.”
—Mary, Queen Of Scots (1542–1587)
“Madame d’Estampes and Madame de Valentinois make me fear that I should be only honoured by my husband as a queen and not loved by him as a woman.”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“If he from heaven that filched that living fire
Condemned by Jove to endless torment be,
I greatly marvel how you still go free
That far beyond Prometheus did aspire”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)