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Empress Influence on the Establishment and Rise in Popularity of the Virgin Mary and Kuan Yin
Krista K. Rodin
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2016.11.011
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
The feminine spiritual figures of compassion, the Catholic Christian Virgin Mother Mary, and the Chinese Buddhist, Kuan Yin, share a number of traits and attributes in spite of their cultural differences. They also share a common history in the development of their devotional worship through two empresses who identified themselves with their respective cultural icon thereby enhancing their political roles while endearing themselves to the common people through their promotion of the spiritual figures of compassion. This paper seeks to show the parallels between the rise in devotion to the Virgin Mary under the Byzantine Empress Pulcheria (399-453) and the corresponding rise in the interest in, and feminization of, Avalokiteshvara/Kuan Yin under the Tang Dynasty Empress Wu Zetian (625-705). While there has been a substantial amount written about how ancient political leaders used selected deities as vehicles for asserting their power, there are only a few that have looked at these two unique Empresses and none that compares their influence in the popularization of devotional worship to Mary and Kuan Yin. This study attempts to begin to fill that gap.
Pulcheria, Wu Zetian, Virgin Mary, Kuan Yin, Tang Dynasty, Byzantine Empire
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