The Virgin Mary and the definition of an adult

So, how old was Mary, Our Lady, when she became pregnant with Our Lord Jesus Christ? Well, the answer commonly held by the Early Church Fathers was the same as what the totally apocryphal gospel, the Protoevangelium of James says. What does that apocryphal writing say?

And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of priests, saying, “Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, lest perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord?” And they said to the high priest, “You stand by the altar of the Lord; go in and pray concerning her, and whatever the Lord shall manifest to you, that also will we do.”. . . And Annas the scribe came to him [Joseph] . . . and saw that Mary was with child. And he ran away to the priest and said to him, “Joseph, whom you did vouch for, has committed a grievous crime.” And the priest said, “How so?” And he said, “He has defiled the virgin whom he received out of the temple of the Lord and has married her by stealth”. . . And the priest said, “Mary, why have you done this? And why have you brought your soul low and forgotten the Lord your God?” . . . And she wept bitterly saying, “As the Lord my God lives, I am pure before him, and know not man.”

From the equally apocryphal The History of Joseph the Carpenter:

Now when righteous Joseph became a widower, my mother Mary, blessed, holy, and pure, was already twelve years old. For her parents offered her in the temple when she was three years of age, and she remained in the temple of the Lord nine years.

So, how did we get the idea that Mary was fourteen to fifteen when she became pregnant? Well, the answer is culture, culture, culture. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Legally, when does a person become an adult today in the USA, in Europe? When did a person become an adult in Reformation Europe? When did a person become an adult in the Roman Empire? How did we get our ages of majority? From a lecture on the Roman Empire comes the following quote:

Girls were pushed into marriage at an early age. Although the legal age for marriage among women was twelve, fourteen was more common in practice. For example, Tullia (c.79-45 B.C.), the daughter of the Roman orator, Cicero (106-43 B.C.), was married at sixteen, widowed at twenty-two, married at twenty-three, divorced at twenty-eight, married again at twenty-nine, divorced again at thirty-three and died in her thirty-fourth year.

The Early Church Fathers all assumed that the Virgin Mary was betrothed as soon as it was legal for her to be betrothed. That would be the age of twelve. The later Reformers assumed the more common age of marriage, which was fourteen. So, where do we get ages such as eighteen, twenty-one, and twenty-five, all of which are ages used in our culture to determine various degrees of legal responsibility? Let’s look at quotes from two more articles. The first article is called Public Health and the Law by William J. Curran:

UNDER the Justinian Code of the Roman Empire promulgated in 533 A.D., a free citizen of the empire attained his full majority at the age of 25. This remarkable code is still the basic foundation of the Civil Laws of Continental Europe and was greatly influential in the British Isles as well. Over the centuries, the legal concept of majority has changed very little and the actual chronological age has been reduced by only four years, to 21. The age of 25 is still used, however, as a dividing line between “youth” and “maturity” in some criminal codes and social welfare systems in the United States.

In an article called The Age of Majority by T.E. James, one can find the following quote:

A child is regarded, in common parlance, as a person under the age of twenty-one years. In the eyes of the common law, all persons were esteemed infants until they attained this age, except for the sovereign, who attained majority at eighteen. . . . [I]n his memoirs Memoirs of Ancient Chivalry, St. Palaye records the minority of the nobles in France ended at seventeen, “because they were then judged strong enough and sufficiently qualified for the culture of their lands, the mechanic arts and commerce in which they were all employed.” St. Palaye referred to a period before training in arms was developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the age of chivalry, for he continued: “yet the profession of arms demanded an ability and strength not to be acquired til twenty-one. . .”

OK, look at all those quotes and put them together. The ages cited are twelve, fourteen, eighteen, twenty-one, and twenty-five. Except for twelve, all the other ages found in the law of the Roman Empire are still present in USA law. In several states, one can still be married at 14 with the permission of a judge. At 18, one can join the Armed Forces, vote, and be tried as an adult. At 21, one can sign contracts in every state of the union. But, most major car rental agencies will not rent you a car until age 25.

So, the ages we take for granted as appropriate ages for making any of various decisions (except for 12) all come from the law and practices of the Roman Empire and are at least 1500 years old. Now, that is TRADITION!