3-097-263 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Fathers of the Church Disputing the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, 1631. The Virgin Mary looks up at the Hebrew letters spelling YHWH (Yahweh), the name of God. The Immaculate Conception, one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, is the doctrine that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her own conception. Debated by medieval theologians, it was not defined as a dogma until 1854, by Pope Pius IX in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus. While the Immaculate Conception asserts Mary's freedom from original sin, the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563, had previously non-dogmatically affirmed her freedom from personal sin.