Mary (mother of Jesus) in the context of "St. Mary's County, Maryland"

In the 5th century in Christianity, there were many developments which led to further fracturing of the State church of the Roman Empire. Emperor Theodosius II called two synods in Ephesus, one in 431 and one in 449, that addressed the teachings of Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius and similar teachings. Nestorius had taught that Christ's divine and human nature were distinct persons, and hence Mary was the mother of Christ but not the mother of God. The Council rejected Nestorius' view causing many churches, centered on the School of Edessa, to a Nestorian break with the imperial church. Persecuted within the Roman Empire, many Nestorians fled to Persia and joined the Sassanid Church (the future Church of the East) thereby making it a center of Nestorianism. By the end of the 5th century, the global Christian population was estimated at 10-11 million. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon was held to clarify the issue further. The council ultimately stated that Christ's divine and human nature were separate but both part of a single entity, a viewpoint rejected by many churches who called themselves miaphysites. The resulting schism created a communion of churches, including the Armenian, Syrian, and Egyptian churches, that is today known as Oriental Orthodoxy. In spite of these schisms, however, the imperial church still came to represent the majority of Christians within the Roman Empire.

At the end of the 4th century the Roman Empire had effectively split into two states although its economy and the Church were still strongly tied. The two halves of the empire had always had cultural differences, in particular exemplified by the widespread use of the Greek language in the Eastern Empire and the more limited use of Greek in the West (Greek was used in the West but Latin was displacing it as the spoken vernacular. By the 5th century scholars in the West had begun to abandon Greek in favor of the use of Latin. The Church in Rome, in particular, began to encourage the use of Latin in the western provinces and published Jerome's Vulgate, the first authorized translation of the Bible in Latin.

Christotokos (Greek: Χριστοτόκος) is a title of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Its English translation is Christ-bearer or, less literally, Mother of Christ. It is used by Christians universally, but particular attention is given to it in the non-Ephesian (or so-called "Nestorian") Church of the East, due to its grievances with the title Theotokos.

Christian art is sacred art which uses subjects, themes, and imagery from Christianity. Most Christian groups use or have used art to some extent, including early Christian art and architecture and Christian media.

Images of Jesus and narrative scenes from the Life of Christ are the most common subjects, and scenes from the Old Testament play a part in the art of most denominations. Images of the Virgin Mary and saints are common in certain denominations of Christianity, including Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Lutheranism. They are less common in other branches of the faith, such as Reformed Christianity.

John Duns Scotus OFM (/ˈskoʊtəs/ SKOH-təs; Ecclesiastical Latin: [duns ˈskɔtus], "Duns the Scot"; c. 1265/66 – 8 November 1308) was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is considered among the most important philosopher-theologians in Western Christendom during the last part of the medieval period, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham.

Duns Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being", that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different formalities of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual (i.e. a certain "thisness"). Duns Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The intellectual tradition derived from Scotus' work is called Scotism.

The Life of the Virgin, showing narrative scenes from the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a common subject for pictorial cycles in Christian art, often complementing, or forming part of, a cycle on the Life of Christ. In both cases the number of scenes shown varies greatly with the space available. Works may be in any medium: frescoed church walls and series of old master prints have many of the fullest cycles, but panel painting, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, stone sculptures and ivory carvings have many examples.

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, sometimes called the Burlington House Cartoon, is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing is in charcoal and black and white chalk, on eight sheets of paper that are glued together. Because of its large size and format the drawing is presumed to be a cartoon for a painting. No painting by Leonardo exists that is based directly on this cartoon, although the drawing may have been in preparation for a now lost or unexecuted painting commissioned by Louis XII. The drawing is the only extant larger-scale drawing by the artist.

The drawing depicts the Virgin Mary seated on the thigh of her mother, Saint Anne, while holding the Christ Child as Christ's young cousin, John the Baptist, stands to the right. It currently hangs in the National Gallery in London.

The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was identified by John of Damascus as having painted the Virgin's portrait.

One of the most famous such organizations was founded in Antwerp. It continued to function until 1795, although by then it had lost its monopoly and therefore most of its power. In most cities, including Antwerp, the local government had given the Guild the power to regulate defined types of trade within the city. Guild membership, as a master, was therefore required for an artist to take on apprentices or to sell paintings to the public. Similar rules existed in Delft, where only members could sell paintings in their city or have a shop. The early guilds in Antwerp and Bruges, setting a model that would be followed in other cities, even had their own showroom market stall from which members could sell their paintings directly to the public.

Zechariah was a Jewish priest mentioned in the New Testament and the Quran, and venerated in Christianity and Islam. In the Bible, he is the father of John the Baptist, a priest of the sons of Aaron in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:67–79), and the husband of Elizabeth who is a relative of the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:36).In the Quran, his story mentioned in initial verse of surah Maryam (chapter Mary).

The Church of Mary (Turkish: Meryem Kilisesi) was an ancient Christian cathedral dedicated to the Theotokos ("Mother of God", i.e., the Virgin Mary), located in Ephesus (near present-day Selçuk in Turkey). It is also known as the Church of the Councils because two councils of importance to the history of Early Christianity (the Council of Ephesus and Second Council of Ephesus) are assumed to have been held within. The church is located in the south stoa of the Olympieion (Temple of Hadrian Olympios) next to the harbor of Ephesus.