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This thesis has two aims. Firstly, in order to answer the question, ‘In what sense do people see Mary as a type of the Church?’, this thesis will set up original typological models of the relationship between Mary and the Church (chapter 1). It will then demonstrate how and why an eschatological element came to be present in these models (chapter 2).It will be a contention of this thesis that looking at the Mario-ecclesial discussions set out in chapters 3 and 4 through these typological models will allow a greater depth of analysis. The models allow one to discern differences between and nuances in various views of the relationship between Mary and the Church that would be impossible to discern if one were using just the language of ‘type’. Secondly the thesis will show how each Mario-ecclesial discussion has been affected by the socio-political context of the time. Specifically, the thesis will analyse the Mario-ecclesial discussions of the patristic, medieval and modern periods in the light of the typological models. In chapter 1, the patristic Mario-ecclesiologies of Irenaeus and Ambrose will be considered. In chapter 2, Bernard of Clairvaux will be used to analyse the eschatological nature of the Mario-ecclesiology in the medieval period. In chapter 3, the contrasting Mario-ecclesiologies of the Second Vatican Council and Hans Urs von Balthasar will be compared. In chapter 4, it will be suggested that John Paul’s model of the Mario-ecclesial relationship was based on his eschatological vision for the Church and the role that Mary plays in that future which is both imminent and already realised. This thesis will demonstrate that by using the typological models in these periods a greater depth of analysis can be achieved. This will be particularly true of the complex and nuanced discussions on Mary in the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century. This analysis will culminate in the particular Mariology of John Paul II.