I was nosing through some books in someone's research pile the other day and came across a reference to Mary--Mary, the Blessed Virgin, Mother of Jesus, yes, that Mary, just so there's no confusion--with the title of Queen of Hell and Demons.
Book got taken away from me by the student doing research before I could find out what was going on. Suffice to say, that's a new one for me. What's going on?
Yes, "Empress of Hell" is one of Mary's titles from the Middle Ages! (And the best one of them, if I do say so myself.)
I wrote about this as a follow-up in an earlier thread:
In her role as mediatrix, Mary is humanity's primary advocate for mercy in salvation. The idea is that sinful Christians (all Christians are sinful) pray to her to intercede with Christ (God) on their behalf.
This is a little bit of a sticky situation in orthodox Christian theology, because all power in salvation lies with God. Mary has no power, and yet she does, and yet she doesn't. This is a pretty important apparent-fissure in medieval devotional theology. Mary asks Christ for mercy, but she always already agrees with his decision/she can't ask for anything he wouldn't grant. So where is Mary's power?
Well, later medieval theology has another soteriology (theology of salvation) problem, and that is the devil. The devil in orthodoxy Christianity also has, in the end, no power. He can't, because that would make him as strong as/stronger than God. The soteriology of Anselm (11th century theologian who set the course for later views of the Crucifixion and salvation) is crucial in setting out a theology of redemption that does away with so called "devil's rights" over people's souls, and puts the focus on the active work of Christ saving humans from human sins/sinfulness.
But if medieval people had religious obsessions besides the humanity of Christ, they were Mary and the devil.
One of the ways this plays out in later medieval literature (sermon illustrations, miracle stories, poems, plays) and early modern devotional poetry is the opposition of Mary to Satan: Mary becomes Satan's foil, his mortal enemy. Two ultimatel/technically powerless figures can take on the power everyone WANTS them to have--in opposition to each other.
The most famous and enduring example of this, and in fact the source of the Queen of Heaven/Empress of Hell dichotomous terminology, is variations on the Theophilus legend. This is especially awesome because Theophilus is the forerunner to one Herr Doktor Faustus. In this legend/miracle story, Theophilus makes a transaction with the devil for the rights to his soul. Near death, he comes to regret his decision (...) and begs Mary to help him. Mary is infinitely merciful, so she does. She puts on her big girl panties girds her loins for battle, descends into hell, and steals back the charter conveying Theophilus' soul to the devil!
It gets even more interesting, though, because Mary's mission to hell is portrayed as warfare. The tales evoke the devil's anger, and use language of violence and theft to describe Mary's actions. In her guise as empress of hell--that is, more powerful even than Satan--she is not the mother of mercy, she is the "queen of vengeance."
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Someone on that thread asked for further reading. There isn't really anything great out there, but a couple I feel okay about recommending:
What I believe to be the most complete list of versions of the actual legend, across languages, is in: