Legitimizing Context: The Literary and Theological Function of Mary and Mariology in Aglipay’s Novenario de la Patria

One of the more striking and, likely, widely-used publications of Gregorio Aglipay, one of the founding fathers of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, is the so-called Novenario de la Patria (1926). It contains both a specific kind of – emancipatory – Mariology and a statement in devotional form of Aglipay’s religious views at the time of its publication. The Mariology of the work has recently been addressed by Gealogo, Furusawa, and De la Cruz: the first, outlining the general features of the ‘Virgin of Balintawak’ (Birhen sa Balintawak);
the second, placing her in the context of other Filipino representations of Mary; and the third, providing a discussion of the representation in the context of Filipino culture and politics; earlier, Ileto also discussed the work. Building on these analyses and going beyond them, this essay focuses on the function of this particular type of Mary-with-child in the Novenario. This question as to the role of Mary in the Novenario is provoked by the apparent oddity that although the title of the work suggests a Marian novena, Mary is in fact absent from most of
the devotional material, only making an appearance in the title of the book, its prefatory (or paratextual) material and briefly as part of the seventh day of the novena. In addressing this question, this paper will move beyond extant scholarly positions in a number of ways.