The Immaculate Conception: History, a miracle, and the Spanish Steps
Everything you need to know about today’s solemnity
Pope Leo XIV visited the Spanish Steps in Rome on Dec. 8, continuing a nearly 70-year tradition of popes traveling to the site on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
Though the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined only in 1854, the feast enjoys a rich and long history in the Church, intertwined with many historical events.
Where does the feast day come from? How was the Dec. 8 date chosen for it? And why does the pope celebrate it by going to the Spanish Steps?
The Pillar explains.
The origins of the feast
Historical records show that some Syrian and Palestinian monasteries in the 5th century celebrated a feast of the “Conception of the Most Holy and All Pure Mother of God” on Dec. 8 or 9.
By the 7th century, the feast was well-known in the East, with the Third Council of Constantinople describing Mary as “immaculate” twice. At that time, however, the term referred to her holiness in life, not to her preservation from original sin.
With the Byzantine influence over Southern Italy between the 7th and 12th centuries, the feast grew in popularity in the West. References appear in Irish works in the late 8th century, and the Winchester calendars and episcopal pontificals record it in the 11th century.
In the early 12th century, Anselm the Younger, nephew of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, spread the feast through several English monasteries, sparking controversy due to its novelty and lack of papal approval. A local council in 1129 addressed the dispute.
Medieval debates on the Immaculate Conception, especially between Dominicans and Franciscans, were in part fueled by the feast’s popularity in England.
The feast still did not always make mention of the Immaculate Conception as understood today — Mary’s conception without original sin – until 1477, when Pope Sixtus IV approved an office and a Mass for the feast day. Even then, the pope did not definitely rule on the matter, but instead allowed for both support or opposition to the idea that Mary was conceived without sin. This was the same position maintained by the Council of Trent.
However, popular belief in the Immaculate Conception grew to be nearly universal. Starting in the late 15th century, many universities did not admit students that would not solemnly swear to defend and assert the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. In 1617, Paul V issued a decree prohibiting public teaching that Mary was born with original sin, although he did not declare the teaching as dogma.
Then, in 1708, Pope Clement XI established the feast as a holy day of obligation. Still, most missals simply referred to the feast as “Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
On Dec. 8, 1854, Blessed Pius IX issued the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, in which he defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception:
“The most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.”
The date – and a miraculous victory
The Immaculate Conception, which marks the conception of Mary, is celebrated exactly nine months before the feast marking her birth – the Nativity of Mary, observed on Sept. 8.
It is difficult to determine, however, which feast was celebrated first, and which was used to determine the date of the other. The earliest documents referencing the feast of the Nativity of Mary are also from 5th-century Syria.
However, the feast day is connected with several historical events that solidified the date – and also made the Immaculate Conception the patroness of several countries.
For example, Dec. 8, 1585 marks the “Miracle of Empel,” when an outnumbered Spanish army unexpectedly defeated the Dutch protestant rebels during the Eighty Years War.
Amid the conflict between the provinces of the Netherlands and the Spanish empire that ruled them, Spanish commander Alessandro Farnese decided to quarter a group of 5,000 elite tercio infantrymen near ‘s-Hertogenbosch for the winter of 1585.
But when the troops arrived at the district of Bommelwaard, which they expected to have enough food to sustain them over the winter, they found that the local farmers had taken all their animals and goods with them when they fled days earlier.
The Spanish troops were then surprised by the arrival of 100 Dutch ships, carrying some 30,000 troops on Dec. 4.
The Dutch forces breached the dikes of Bommelwaard, forcing the Spanish to seek higher ground in Empel. The Dutch then began an artillery campaign against the Spanish forces.
By Dec. 7, the Spanish soldiers were out of provisions and had even resorted to eating their horses. Facing the threat of starvation and the Dutch attacks, they were certain their death was near. Their leader, Francisco Arias de Bobadilla, ordered the soldiers to confess their sins and receive the Eucharist for what they expected to be the last time. A Franciscan chaplain encouraged them in a homily that day to die for their Church, their flag and their king.
But then a Spanish tercio, while digging a trench that day, found a painting representing the Immaculate Conception. Bobadilla saw this a sign of divine favor, and had his forces raise the image for veneration in a nearby church while the soldiers sang Marian hymns.
That night, an unexpected drop in temperature froze the waters that were covering the whole countryside due to flooding from the nearby rivers. Although it was mid-winter, temperatures had not dropped below freezing in the previous days, and a freeze of that magnitude was unheard of before January.
In some areas, the ice reached more than seven feet thick, trapping the Dutch boats. The Spaniards burned the Dutch ships and conquered the Dutch fort along the river from which they had been bombarded, defeating the Dutch forces on Dec. 9.
That same day, the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed the patroness of the Spanish tercios.
While the Immaculate Conception was widely considered the unofficial patron of Spain, she was officially declared the patroness of the country in 1760.
Many former Spanish colonies - including Nicaragua and the Philippines - kept the Immaculate Conception as the patroness of their countries after independence.
The Spanish Steps
Every year since 1958, the pope has visited the Spanish Steps in Rome on the Dec. 8 feast day.
The history of the tradition stems back to Blessed Pius IX, who inaugurated the Column of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8, 1857 at the Piazza Mignanelli, which is part of Piazza di Spagna, in front of the Spanish Embassy.
The column was donated to the city of Rome by the King of Naples, Ferdinand II, and built by more than 200 papal states’ firefighters. It includes four marble statues depicting David, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Moses, with an image of Our Lady on top.
After blessing the image in front of a Spanish delegation, Pius IX told the Spanish ambassador that “Spain was the country that worked more than any, through its kings and theologians, so that the day of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary could come” three years prior.
Pope Pius XII started the tradition of sending flowers to the statue every year on Dec. 8. Pope John XXIII became the first pope to visit the monument on the feast day in 1958.
Ever since, the pope goes each year to the monument to place a floral arrangement at the foot of the column, while the chief of the Roman firefighters presents a bouquet. A fire truck is used to place the bouquet around the right arm of the statute of Our Lady on top of the monument.
Italian devotion
The feast of the Immaculate Conception is traditionally the day on which many families in Italy put up their Christmas decorations, and many Christmas markets open on that day, or a few days earlier.
Many Italian regions have their own celebrations for the feast day. There’s a large procession in Ciminna, Sicily on Dec. 8. The procession recalls a late 18th-century event in which the friars of the Franciscan convent in the city had commissioned a statue of the Immaculate Conception.
The statue was expected to arrive from Palermo on Dec. 7, just ahead of the feast day. When it did not arrive as planned, the people of Ciminna took matters into their own hands, traveling to Palermo, finding the image, and bringing it back to their town themselves.
Devotion to the Immaculate Conception is so great in Southern Italy that it played a role in Blessed Pius IX’s decision to declare the Immaculate Conception as dogma.
In 1848, the pope was forced to flee to the town of Gaeta after Rome was taken by forces led by Freemason Giuseppe Mazzini.
The Immaculate Conception was the patroness of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where Gaeta was located.
In fact, the kingdom had been restored on Dec. 8, 1816 after the Napoleonic occupation. The date was chosen because the ruling dynasty had a devotion to the Immaculate Conception.
Pius IX was forced to spend two years in the kingdom under the protection of King Ferdinand II before he could finally return to Rome.
A curial cardinal told the pope during this short exile that “the world will only be cured of the evils that oppress it ... by proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Only this doctrinal definition will re-establish the sense of Christian truths.”
The pope, also surprised by devotion to the doctrine in the kingdom and Ferdinand II’s efforts, published the encyclical Ubi primum a few days later, asking bishops worldwide for their opinions on defining the dogma. Of the replies, 536 bishops responded positively, four negatively, and 36 - mostly from protestant countries - argued they believed the doctrine to be true, but that it was inconvenient to declare it.
The United States
In 1846, the American bishops met in Baltimore for their sixth provincial council, in which they adopted a decree to declare “the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, as the Patroness of the United States of America.”
The bishops also petitioned the Holy See to add the word “Immaculate” to the orations and preface of the office and Mass of the Conception of Mary, something that was not part of the missal at the time.
Blessed Pius IX granted the request in September that year, just three months into his pontificate.
The pope would also approve the addition of the word “Immaculate” to the Mass and Office for the feast day in the Diocese of Rome a year later, extending the new office and Mass to the universal Church in 1849.
When Pope Pius IX consulted the bishops of the world in 1849 about declaring the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the American bishops gave an unanimous positive response in their seventh provincial council, the only such case from bishops in a protestant country.
The documents of the sixth and seventh provincial councils explain the rationale behind their decision.
First, they show that some believed it was appropriate to declare the Immaculate Conception as the patroness of the country because Bishop John Carroll had chosen Our Lady as the patroness of the Diocese of Baltimore when he was elected as the first bishop in the U.S. in 1791.
Also, large parts of the American territory by then had been part of Spain, and, therefore, placed under the patronage of the Immaculate Conception, since Pope Clement XIII had declared her the patroness of Spain and its possessions in 1760. This included the states of Florida, Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Such a wonderful history! "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!"
Thank you, Edgar, for this really interesting historical perspective on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It seems that the sensus fidelium was key to its proclamation, however "inconvenient" it may have seemed to some at the time:
"Devotion to the Immaculate Conception is so great in Southern Italy that it played a role in Blessed Pius IX’s decision to declare the Immaculate Conception as dogma."