“The reformers believed that medieval theology and devotion had sexualized the Virgin by excessive idolatrous attention to her body, and by venerating the material details, however trivial or aprocryphal, of events in Mariological history. As Donna Ellington puts it, "Marys bodily human nature was the cornerstone of the entire medieval edifice of the virgin's cult." At a further level of idolatry, the veneration of bodily and material objects associated with Mary's body - a term that might appear as a modern anachronism but which was, in fact, already becoming current among Protestant polemists to deride what they saw as superstitious religious practices of pagans and catholics alike.”
