Mater Misericordiae: Mary, Mother of Mercy
The title “Mother of Mercy” first appears with reference to Mary in the tenth century, in John of Salerno’s Life of Saint Odo (of Cluny). St. Odo died in 942 and John commemorates him a couple of years later, recounting that the Virgin appeared to St. Odo and told him, Ego sum mater misericordiae: I am the Mother of Mercy. The title became more widespread in the eleventh and, especially, the twelfth century with the liturgical use of the hymn Salve Regina, known in English as the Hail Holy Queen, first at the Abbey of Cluny, attested by 1135, and later in Cistercian houses, where by 1218 it was used daily.
The author of this hymn is unknown, though the two candidates for this honor most often mentioned are Blessed Hermann of Reichenau, also known as Bd. Hermannus Contractus, Herman the Crippled (1013-1054), and St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). Hermann, though severely crippled from childhood, and oblated to the Abbey of Reichenau by his parents who were unable to care for him, nevertheless became a scholar and composer of great renown, having mastered Latin and Greek and even Arabic. The Salve Regina bears stylistic resemblance to other Marian hymns known to be composed by him. On the other hand, one of the early biographies of Bernard of Clairvaux, by John the Hermit, records a vision that Bernard experienced, in which he heard the Salve Regina sung by a heavenly choir:
One night, Bernard was sleeping in the dormitory amongst the other monks, when he heard a glorious sound of voices coming from the chapel. So, without waking anyone else, he quietly went to the chapel, and—behold!—there were multitudes of angels within, bathed in the radiant refulgence of celestial light. They were singing the praises of almighty God and the most holy Mother of God, in resonant waves of indescribably mellifluous harmonies. And he saw the blessed Mary herself standing in their midst! She held a golden thurifer in one hand and an incense boat in the other. One of the angels led Bernard to the right side of the altar, next to the glorious Virgin. And there he heard sung in an angelic voice the Salve Regina. Bernard remembered carefully all that he heard, and, the next day wrote it down completely and precisely, and sent a copy to Pope Eugenius III (translated by Fr. Robert Nixon, OSB).
Scholarly opinion tends to favor Herman and thus an earlier date. Still it is fitting that this hymn, which has fixed “all generations” since its composition in contemplation and impetration of Mary as Mother of Mercy, evokes in those whose souls have been marked by the tenderness of its spirit a sense of an origin somewhere in the domain of God’s grace. If it is Hermann, it seems fitting that the one who “lifts up the lowly” had indeed “lifted up” Herman, from being, it seemed, doomed to a position of social uselessness and community burden to a position, instead, of international renown. And St. Bernard himself, in the incident reported, takes no credit for the composition but ascribes it to an angelic voice. In either case, it is as though this inspired and for centuries beloved invocation of Mary as Mother of Mercy had its origin in an initiative of grace.
