Mary and Diana (I)

In 1922 the servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, then a young priest and scholar, was offered to accompany a distinguished French novelist, Emile Baumann, on a trip tracing the travels of Saint Paul. Baumann's book was eventually published in more than 100 editions. Here is an interesting excerpt showing Mary's early role in the Church: "One other moment in the voyage among countless ones that affected me was the visit to the city of Ephesus. When I saw it, it was a wilderness; when St Paul saw it, it was called the "Treasure House of Asia." He looked out on the great glory of the temple of Diana as she was called in Latin or Artemis as she was known in Greek--one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was 425 feet long, 220 feet wide and 60 feet wide. The altar itself had been carved by Praxiteles, the greatest of all the Greek sculptors. Each of the 127 columns was of Parian marble weighing 150 tons, measuring 60 feet high and decorated in gold and precious stones. Eight of these columns I saw later in the Church of Santa Sophia in former Constantinople. (...) Paul began preaching in the synagogue and then later on after it rejected him, he taught in the school of Tyrannus, the heathen Sophist who specialized in rhetoric and philosophy. During the month of May, which was the sacred month of Diana, Paul noticed that the drunkenness, debauchery and worship of Diana was beginning to decline, since he preached that there were no gods made with hands. Consequently there was in Ephesus muttered curses against him; finally, the ill-concealed exasperation came to an end when the chief victim of the decline of idol worship began to protest against Paul. His name was Demetrius; he had built a considerable business in the manufacture of little silver shrines and images of Diana which he sold to pilgrims on their visits to the temple. Also affected were the sacred slaves and musicians of the temple, as well as skilled artisans and ordinary workman.