Chris Maunder - The Oxford Handbook of Mary

Studying Mary has been a passion of mine for thirty-five years, and so I am delighted to be able to present this volume as the latest in the series of Oxford Handbooks. Here you will find chapters from a range of academic disciplines, all with Mary the mother of Jesus as their focus. They represent research on historical and contemporary Christian and Islamic interpretations of the woman who has commanded devotion from many millions of people across the centuries.

This handbook is the combined effort of many people. First of all, I am indebted to the thirty-eight contributors of the chapters, who responded so efficiently and warmly to my invitation to write a chapter. It was a genuine pleasure to communicate with people across the world; in many cases I had already read and respected their published work. I felt star-struck at times! We have all achieved a great deal in getting everything finished within two years, and that is due to the contributors willingness to enter into regular dialogue about their chapter.

Secondly, I would like to express my gratitude to Tom Perridge and Karen Raith at OUP for selecting me to edit the Handbook, and for their prompt replies to my questions in providing support and advice. This and other publications with OUP have led to my appreciation of the excellent team that they have there in the Religion department.

Thirdly, I would like to thank my wife Natalie, who helped me with proof reading and editing for consistency. We have tried hard to give the copy editor as little work as possible! She has been a wonderful support to me as I worked on the Handbook.

I would also like to thank the staff at the university where I work, York St John, which has always been a happy place for me and which gives me the necessary backing to research, write, and publish. I am now a veteran of the Theology & Religious Studies Department, about to receive a twenty-five year service award as I write! And, finally, I would like to mention the Centre for Marian Studies, the interdisciplinary group of Marian scholars of which I have been a member since it was founded in 1995. Several of the members have contributed chapters, proving that we work well as a team.

I hope the reader enjoys the fruit of our work together. One book cannot be comprehensive, and I have had to make decisions in compiling a volume of just over 300,000 words. Perhaps there will be just enough to give the reader a good sense of where the study of Mary stands in 2018.

Chris Maunder

York St John University

5 September 2018

Note: several chapters dealing with patristic or medieval sources have used the well-known nineteenth-century collection by Migne and its numerical listing as the resource for the original text. To avoid repetition, I will provide the bibliographical details here:

PL. Migne, J. P., editor. 18411855. Patrologia Latina, 217 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, on the internet via http://patristica.net/latina/, accessed 5 September 2018.

PG. Migne, J. P., editor. 18571866. Patrologia Graeca, 166 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, on the internet via http://patristica.net/graeca/, accessed 5 September 2018.