Did Mary take a vow of virginity? The question of Luke 1,34 and the theologians’ answer

Did Mary take a vow of virginity? The theological tradition answers yes, but it divides over the manner and the moment. The common opinion of the schools holds that Mary made a vow of virginity and that she was the first woman to do so. Thomas Aquinas, however, introduces a decisive distinction: before the betrothal there was the desire, not yet an absolute vow.

The question is not devotional, it is exegetical and scholastic. It arises from a single sentence in the Gospel of Luke, and the answer given determines how one understands Mary’s marriage to Joseph and the perpetual virginity of Mary itself. What follows gathers the works of the Locus Mariologicus library, including those that deny the vow.

What is at stake in the question of Luke 1,34?

The whole debate turns on Mary’s reply to the angel Gabriel: «πῶς ἔσται τοῦτο, ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω;», in literal translation «how shall this be, since I do not know a man?». The Vulgate renders it «quomodo fiet istud, quoniam virum non cognosco?». The technical point lies in the tense of the verb: γινώσκω is present, not past. Mary does not say that she has not known a man until then, she says that she does not know a man, and she says it already betrothed to Joseph.

Hence the difficulty that occupied theologians for centuries. If Mary was betrothed and expected to live the marriage, the question would be superfluous, since the announced conception could occur in the ordinary way. The objection becomes reasonable only if there is, on her part, a firm resolve. This is why tradition introduced here the category of vow.

The common thesis of the schools: Mary was the first to make the vow

The clearest formulation is found in a classic manual, the Compendium of Mariology by I. Keuppens, of 1946, which devotes to the question a thesis of its own, stated in Latin as «utrum Maria omnium prima votum perpetuum virginitatis emiserit», that is, «whether Mary, first of all, made a perpetual vow of virginity». Keuppens answers in the affirmative, and the proposition he defends states that the Blessed Virgin made, before all others in time and in perfection, the vow of virginity. Keuppens adds a useful point of theological history: this is the «sententia communissima», the most common opinion, which Gabriel Vásquez went so far as to call most true.

This is therefore no marginal view. Luigi Gambero, studying the medieval Latin theologians, sums up why the thesis appealed so strongly to the scholastics: «se il dono della maternità divina è venuto a Maria esclusivamente da Dio, quello della verginità risulta anche il frutto dell’iniziativa di lei», that is, «if the gift of divine motherhood came to Mary exclusively from God, that of virginity is also the fruit of her own initiative». The vow is the way of saying that Mary’s virginity was not a state of fact but a personal and free act.

The collective work published for the sixteenth centenary of the Council of Capua, by Giovanni Liccardo, Franco Ruotolo and Sergio Tanzarella, records the same insistence in a Spanish theologian of the second scholasticism, who speaks of «voluntas servandi virginitatem», the will to keep virginity, and comments: «Maria ha voluto essere e rimanere vergine. La sua volontà è stata efficace amore della castità, non una velleità o vaga tendenza alla santità della vita», «Mary willed to be and to remain a virgin. Her will was an effective love of chastity, not a whim or a vague tendency towards holiness of life».

Thomas Aquinas made a distinction that many forget

Here the sources diverge, and the divergence deserves to be flagged rather than harmonised. Francisco Morgott and Gabino Chávez, in the Thomistic Mariology, state that «Santo Tomás no duda ni un instante que la virgen haya hecho este voto», «Saint Thomas does not doubt for an instant that the Virgin made this vow», and that he finds the proof in the character of the Mother of God and in Luke 1,34.

Francisco Canals Vidal, however, reads the same Thomas more precisely and shows that the Aquinate denies exactly what many attribute to him. According to Canals Vidal, Thomas does not hold that the Mother of God, before being betrothed to Joseph, had made an absolute vow of virginity, but that, although she had it in desire, «confió sobre esto su voluntad al divino arbitrio», «she entrusted her will in this matter to the divine judgement». The reference is the commentary on the Sentences, book IV, distinction 30, question 2, article 1.

The word vow here designates two distinct things. One is the interior resolve of virginity, prior to the betrothal and submitted to God’s will. The other is the absolute, binding vow, which tradition places after the betrothal, when it was already clear that Joseph shared the same resolve. Andrea Mallimaci, commenting on the same passage of the commentary on the Sentences, puts Thomas’s argument thus: «la Santísima Virgen, antes de casarse con José, fue certificada divinamente de que José tenía el mismo propósito. Por eso, no se estaba poniendo en peligro al casarse», «the Most Holy Virgin, before marrying Joseph, was divinely assured that Joseph had the same resolve. Therefore she was not putting herself at risk by marrying».

Why the Fathers read a prior resolve into Mary’s question

The reading is not a scholastic invention. Áurea Silva dos Santos, in the study The role of the Virgin Mary in the economy of salvation, of 2024, drawing on Manfred Hauke, records that a preceding resolve of virginity in Mary is indicated for the first time by Saint Gregory of Nyssa, who died in 394, and by Saint Augustine, who died in 430, on the ground that the question of Luke 1,34 would make no sense if a few months later Mary were to begin marital relations with Saint Joseph.

The nuance deserves emphasis. Neither Gregory of Nyssa nor Augustine builds the argument from a juridical formula of vow, but from the coherence of the scene: such a question presupposes a life already decided. This is why Eva C. Rava, in Perpetual virginity and divine motherhood of Mary, of 1992, records the astonishment of Bernard of Clairvaux before this choice, in the apostrophe «O Vergine saggia, o Vergine pia, chi ti ha insegnato che piace a Dio la verginità?», «O wise Virgin, O devout Virgin, who taught you that virginity is pleasing to God?». Bernard admires the firmness of the resolve in a culture where barrenness was reckoned a curse.

Who denies that Mary made a vow of virginity?

The most famous denial is John Calvin’s, cited by João Marcos de Oliveira Silva in the study Blessed among women?, of 2019. Commenting on Luke 1,34, Calvin writes that «the conjecture some make from these words, that she had made a vow of perpetual virginity, is groundless and completely absurd». The point is the more interesting in that Calvin himself, according to the same study, did not break with faith in Mary’s perpetual virginity, which Silva records as shared also by Luther and by Wesley. The vow is denied without denying the virginity.

Nor is this a controversy closed in the sixteenth century. Carlos Ignacio González, in Mary, Evangelised and Evangeliser, of 1988, refers in his bibliography to the article by M. Villanueva, «Nueva controversia en torno al voto de virginidad de Nuestra Señora», in Estudios Bíblicos 16, of 1957, pages 307 to 328. The modern exegetical discussion has a literature of its own and predates the Second Vatican Council.

How can the vow be reconciled with a true marriage?

The classic objection is obvious: one who takes a vow of virginity cannot contract a valid marriage, since matrimonial consent bears upon the body. The answer of Thomas Aquinas, cited in the acts of the First International Symposium of Josephology, is in the Summa Theologiae, III, question 29, article 2: «verum fuit matrimonium Virginis Matris Dei et Joseph: quia uterque consensit in copulam conjugalem, non autem expresse in copulam carnalem, nisi sub conditione, si Deo placeret», «the marriage of the Virgin Mother of God and Joseph was true, because both consented to the conjugal union, but not expressly to the carnal union, except on condition, if it should please God».

The distinction is fine and resolves the impasse. The object of consent is the copula conjugalis, the conjugal bond, and not the copula carnalis, to which both consent only conditionally. Hence the doctrine that the marriage was at once true and virginal, a theme treated in the betrothal of Mary and Joseph.

What the Church defines and what it leaves open

The planes must be kept apart, for this is where much discussion goes astray. Mary’s perpetual virginity is doctrine of faith, professed under the Greek title ἀειπάρθενος, aeiparthenos, ever-virgin, and articulated in the three classic aspects of virginitas ante partum, in partu and post partum, as explained in the article on the virginity of Mary and the three aspects of the dogma. The vow, by contrast, in the sense of a determinate and datable juridical act, belongs to theology and not to dogmatic definition.

The prudent formulation is this: faith affirms perpetual virginity, common theology affirms the vow, and the most rigorous reading of Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between a resolve submitted to God and an absolute vow subsequent to the betrothal. The same demand for rigour applies to the most frequent objection against perpetual virginity, treated in who the brothers of Jesus in the Bible are.

Frequently asked questions

Did Mary take the vow of virginity before or after the betrothal?

According to the reading of Thomas Aquinas presented by Francisco Canals Vidal, before the betrothal there was the desire of virginity, entrusted to the divine judgement, and not an absolute vow. The absolute vow comes later, when it was already certain that Joseph had the same resolve.

Is Mary’s vow of virginity a dogma of faith?

No. The dogma is Mary’s perpetual virginity, professed as aeiparthenos. The vow is the common theological explanation of how that virginity was assumed by Mary, but it is not an object of definition.

Where does the Bible speak of Mary’s vow of virginity?

Nowhere expressly. The only biblical support is indirect and lies in Luke 1,34, in the question «I do not know a man», whose Greek verb in the present tense led Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine to suppose a resolve already taken.

Did Calvin accept Mary’s vow of virginity?

No. According to the study by João Marcos de Oliveira Silva, Calvin called the conjecture of the vow groundless and completely absurd, although he did not deny Mary’s perpetual virginity, which Luther and Wesley also upheld.

Who was the first person to take a vow of virginity?

The common thesis of the manuals, formulated by I. Keuppens in the Compendium of Mariology of 1946, is that the Blessed Virgin was the first of all, in time and in perfection, to make the vow of virginity. Keuppens presents it as the most common opinion among theologians.