Discuss the reasons for the growth of the Cult of the Virgin Mary during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the effects this cult had on the Gothic cathedrals

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1. Chartres was the spiritual center of the cult of the Virgin, which throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries assumed an increasingly important role in the religious life of Western Europe. The popularity of this cult contributed, perhaps more than any other factor, to the ever-increasing size of the era’s churches. Christians worshiped the Virgin as the Bride of Christ, Personification of the Church, Queen of Heaven, and prime Intercessor with God for the salvation of humankind. This last role was especially important, for in it the Virgin could intervene to save sinners from eternal damnation. The cult of the Virgin manifested itself especially in the French cathedrals, which are often dedicated to Notre Dame, “Our Lady.”
2. If most of the faithful found it impossible to identify with Jesus, who was, after all, a superhuman figure, they could identify with the completely human Mary. In this tendency to prize the human, we see a hint of what would be the driving force of intellectual pursuit in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the exploration of what it means to be human.