For there is not, indeed there is not, any place in the whole of the God-inspired Scripture where, on going about, one would not see signs of her scattered about in diverse ways. If you were to lay these bare, as best you could, by painstaking effort from the words, you would find even more distinctly how great was the glory that she embraced from God. Indeed, see how she is adorned with names of many meanings and revealed very clearly in many places in Scripture, as for example, whenever [Scripture] calls her a virgin, a young maiden, a prophetess, then a bridal chamber, house of God, holy temple, second tabernacle, holy table, sanctuary, mercy-seat, golden censer, holy of holies, cherubim of glory, golden jar, tablets of the covenant, priestly staff, sceptre of the kingdom, diadem of beauty.
(Andrew of Crete, Fourth Sermon on the Nativity)1
To modern sensibilities the claim of the great Byzantine Father, Andrew of Crete (†c. 740), that traces of Mary are to be found in the whole of Scripture, may seem exaggerated and exotic, akin to the fervent—one might say excessive—cult of the Virgin that arose in the Latin Church in the later Middle Ages.2 Yet, almost without exception, throughout the Patristic and Medieval periods, Marian writings of all kinds in both the Eastern and Western traditions are steeped with scriptural quotations and allusions. In fact, for well over half of the more than two thousand years of Christian history, Mary was viewed as much through the lens of Old Testament exegesis as through those brief passages in the New Testament that mention her,3 which is to say that the dominant mode of speaking about and understanding her was typological or figural.4 Epithets such as ‘the new Eve’ (Gen. 1–3), ‘Jacob’s ladder’ (Gen. 28:10–16), ‘burning bush’ (Exod. 3:1–8), ‘fleece of Gideon’ (Judg. 6:37–40), ‘ark’ (II Sam.6.12–23), ‘bridal chamber’ (Ps. 18:6), ‘tower of ivory’ (Song of Songs 7:4), ‘rod of Jesse’ (Isa. 11:1), and many more were once deeply significant to all Christians, from the most erudite of theologians to the simplest of the faithful. Alongside strictly typological imagery, one also finds what might be termed allegorical or symbolic representations which are also read at the non-literal level as pointing towards God, who is the author of all things (Brock 1992: 23–57; López Pérez 1995). It might be tempting to think that Marian enthusiasts such as Andrew had recourse to such imagery because they could not find enough material on the Virgin in the New Testament, but although this was certainly a side benefit, the reality is that all forms of Christian discourse made extensive use of typological and symbolic interpretation.
Even today, although few may be aware of their original significance, typological images are to be found in the liturgy, in litanies, in hymns, and, of course, in numerous works of art. Indeed, the main statement of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) on Mary declares that, ‘The books of the Old Testament describe the history of salvation, by which the coming of Christ into the world was slowly prepared. These earliest documents, as they are read in the Church and are understood in the light of a further and full revelation, bring the figure of the woman, Mother of the Redeemer, into a gradually clearer light’ (Lumen Gentium 55). It then goes on to describe her as the ‘new Eve’ who showed ‘an undefiled faith, not in the word of the ancient serpent, but in that of God’s messenger’ (Lumen Gentium 63). More recently, a certain disquiet with the limitations of the historical-critical method (see Ratzinger 1993), along with new developments in theories of language and reading, and the application of philosophical hermeneutics to the Bible (Reynolds 2016: 2–4), have resulted in a new openness to the possibility of a plurality of meanings in the text, and a greater willingness to accept a dynamic relationship between reader and text, thereby offering the possibility of a certain rapprochement with Patristic and Medieval modes of reading and engaging with the Bible.
Based on the elaborate imagery that surrounds Mary, there is a common misperception, even among some academics who should know better, that this is proof that the Virgin is somehow heir to pre-Christian goddess cults, whether those of Rhea, Tyche, and Cybele in Constantinople, Isis in Egypt, etc., or that her image is heavily influenced by feudal and courtly constructs in the Medieval West.5 While it is undeniable that social, cultural, and religious factors played an important role in forming Mary’s image, especially in the popular mind, and it is true that she did take over some roles previously assigned to goddesses and empresses, it is essential to understand that the original and central significance of virtually all Marian imagery is based on the typological exegesis of Scripture, or sometimes on symbolic readings. The Fathers and their Medieval counterparts do not impose non-literal significance willy-nilly on Scripture, nor do they draw on pagan imagery (in those relatively rare instances where this may be so) with the express intent of replacing one goddess cult with another. Rather, one must always take account of the framework in which they were operating (Peltomaa 2001: 122–3). The essential hermeneutic principle, therefore, in determining the true meaning of Marian types and symbols is to establish how they relate to the nexus of the faith (‘nexus mysteriorum inter se’: Dei Filius, Denzinger and Schönmetzer 3016) centred on Christ, since it is in his person that all meaning ultimately lies. One cannot separate Mary from Christ, the Church, or any of the other mysteries of the faith without losing view of who she is as a person and what her role is in the economy of salvation. Where such a separation does occur, whether through the exaggerated exegesis or excessive sentimental piety of certain Patristic and Medieval authors, or the sloppy academic practice of some commentators, then one indeed may speak of ‘mariolatry’.6
If language is to signify God, then in some way it must be capable of containing the divine within itself. Here, an analogy may be made between the manner in which Mary clothed the Word with flesh, so that, attenuating his divinity, he becomes visible and audible to us. Both Mary and Scripture must and do have a real, historical existence, but at the same time they are transparent to the infinite, capable of communicating the divine.7 This, in brief, is what Christian exegesis is all about.
In Patristic Christianity, the reception and exegesis of Scripture was a dynamic and complex process that brought together author, text, and reader in a dimension that we may describe as sacred. Patristic exegesis emerged out of the interaction between Christianity and two sophisticated intellectual worlds, the Jewish midrash tradition, which demanded a thoroughgoing knowledge of the literal texts of Scripture and their allegorical possibilities, and of the theoretical approaches of the highly-developed philosophical and rhetorical schools of Hellenic culture (see Young 1997: 49–76). It was only after the acquisition of all the necessary philological skills, as well as the achievement of a mature spiritual disposition, that one could endeavour to delve into the deeper meaning of Scripture. Nor was exegesis ever purely the fruit of personal effort or reflection, rather the exegete operated within the ecclesia, the living community of the Church, on the basis of the ‘rule of faith’ (the symbols and creeds which authoritatively laid out the fundamental Christian truths, themselves derived from Scripture), which was the guarantor that any given interpretation truly came from God. It was in this space that the hermeneutical ‘gap’ between God, the symbolic system of the text, and the reader was bridged by the Spirit, so that there was a Horizontverschmelzung or ‘fusion of horizons’, to repurpose Gadamer’s term, allowing the divine to reveal itself.8
For the Fathers (who were followed by their Medieval counterparts), the primary mode of practising exegesis that emerged from this complex encounter of cultures and spiritual values involved interpreting the people, events, things, and institutions of the Old Testament as in some way foreshadowing the coming of Christ, in whose person they find their full meaning. This is an exegetical approach that today is generally described as typological, although there is still a lack of consensus over the precise meaning of these terms as we now apply them to the Fathers, and as the Fathers themselves originally employed them.9 In the New Testament, there are many examples of reinterpretation of the Old as pointing towards Christ. Much of the earliest Christian exegesis concentrates in particular on showing how Christ fulfils the prophetic vision of Hebrew scripture, an exercise that intrinsically demanded exegesis of the New Testament in order to show how that prophetic vision continued to unfold, through the Spirit, in Christ ever present in his Church. It is crucial here to emphasize that such typological readings were not merely prophecies whose sole value was that they pointed towards the Christ-event. Rather, given that Christ is the ground of all Creation, one must think of meaning radiating out from him in all directions, bound neither by time, place, people, nor culture, although mediated through these realities. A type, then, is not emptied of meaning by being reinterpreted in Christ, rather it is filled with new significance at both the literal and allegorical levels. Types and antitypes are in a dynamic relationship that does not cease to signify in new ways with the end of Christ’s historical time on earth, since they lie both within and without history. Thus, while the triad of author, text, and reader exists within linear time, implying the need for a diachronic interpretation, rooted in history and employing the exegete’s philological and historical skills to the full, all three can also, as it were, exist outside time in an eternal present, by recognizing that the ground of their being lies in God. For this reason, any given passage of Scripture may yield multiple meanings in the hands of different exegetes, who are influenced by diverse personal, historical, and cultural circumstances.
The facets of His word are more numerous than the faces of those who learn from it. God depicted His word with many beauties, so that each of those who learn from it can examine that aspect of it which he likes. And God has hidden within His word all sorts of treasures, so that each of us can be enriched by it from whatever aspect he meditates on. … Anyone who encounters Scripture should not suppose that the single one of its riches that he has found is the only one to exist; rather he should realize that he himself is only capable of discovering that one out of the many riches which exist in it. (Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on the Diatesseron I.18–19)10
By the early Middle Ages, this complex way of viewing Scripture as both rooted in history and signifying beyond itself had been formalized into a system known as the quadriga or fourfold exegesis, in which Scripture could potentially be understood at four levels, the literal or historical, the allegorical or spiritual, the tropological or moral, and finally the anagogical, which referred to fulfilment at the end of time, the eschaton.11
Any discussion of Marian typology must begin with mention of the most fundamental typological relationship of all, that of Mary and Eve, which parallels the Pauline recapitulation of Adam in Christ (Rom. 5:14), first suggested by Justin Martyr (†c. 165) (Dialogus cum Trypho 100.4–5).12 The same view was then developed by Irenaeus (†c. 202) (Adversus Haereses 4.38.1 and 5.16.2),13 who writes of how Jesus, with the co-operation of Mary, the new Eve (Adversus Haereses 3.22.4),14 recapitulated humanity and brought Creation to its planned telos in the Father through his incarnation, death, and resurrection (Reynolds 2012: 109–13). This Irenaean typological exegesis places the Virgin at the centre of the economy of salvation, because her openness to God’s plan allows the Word to take on human nature, so that she becomes, as Anselm of Canterbury († 1109) will later put it, ‘Mother of the restitution of all things’ (Oratio 52 (51)).15 If she has restored the whole of creation in its right relationship to God, then all created things, including Scripture, are also, in some sense, summed up in her. This may be one reason why the Fathers (and Medieval writers) came to perceive her presence in so much of Scripture and also saw her symbolized in the ‘book of nature’, just as they did her Son.
I shall begin this section with a brief examination of Mary, the ‘virgin earth’, as representative of how the Fathers made use of a type that could easily be mistaken for a pagan symbol. I shall go on to look at some passages that contain what might be termed concatenations of Marian types, in order to illustrate how typological and symbolic imagery offered authors the opportunity to weave allegorical filigrees of extraordinary variety and beauty while at the same time conveying fundamental truths of the faith through a universally acknowledged shorthand. For reasons of space it will not be possible to provide analysis of a more extensive range of types or texts, but I hope that in this way I can at least give some insights into how to navigate the world of Marian typology and symbolism (see Gambero 1991; Ladouceur 2006; Peltomaa 2011; Reynolds 2016). I should also point out that as I concentrate here on objects, I shall not discuss the many biblical women who have been considered types of Mary (see Serra 2006), other than some brief comments on Eve, nor shall I dwell on more well-known types such as the bride of Canticles (and Ps. 44), the daughter of Sion (Zech. 9:9), and the virgin of Isa. 7:14. Finally, I should add that since this is a text-based study, I shall be making only passing reference to art (but see Schiller 1971).
The notion that Mary is the new Garden of Eden, from whom the new Adam, Christ, was generated seems to originate with Irenaeus as part of his theory of recapitulation in which he compares Adam’s birth from the virgin earth with Christ’s birth from the Virgin Mary:
And as the first-fashioned Adam received his substance from the earth uncultivated and still virgin (‘for God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground’ (Genesis 2.5) and was fashioned by the hand of God (Psalms 119.73), that is, by the Word of God, for ‘all things came into being through him’ (John 1.3) and ‘then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground’ (Genesis 2.7), thus the Word, recapitulating Adam in himself, from Mary still virgin rightly received the generation that is the recapitulation of Adam. (Adversus Haereses 3.21.10)16
Hippolytus († 263), expanding on the idea of Mary as the unploughed earth of prelapsarian Eden, connects this reading with that of the bedewed fleece (Judg. 6:36–40), which was a type of the Incarnation (the Word, who descends like dew into Mary’s womb): ‘As is said [by Isaac], “God give thee the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, abundance of corn and wine” (Gen. 27:28), it is most clear that with this term he is designating the Word, who came down from heaven like dew, while earth is the flesh that he took on from the Virgin’ (Benedictiones Isaac et Iacob 1).17 Ephrem (†c. 373) is fond of using the earth typology in a variety of ways in order to show that Jesus and Mary recapitulate Adam and Eve. Here, he hints both at the parallel that was sometimes drawn between the womb of Mary/birth and the tomb of Gethsemane/resurrection (cf. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum 1.31),18 linking it to the Pauline notion of the death of the old man, who rises again in Christ:
The virginal conception teaches us that he who brought Adam into the world without bonds of the flesh, drawing him out of the virgin earth, also formed the second Adam without carnal union in the womb of the Virgin. The first Adam returned to the womb of his mother; instead through the work of the second Adam, who did not enter into the womb of the earth, he who had been buried in the womb of his mother was drawn out of it. (Diatessaron 2.2)19
John Chrysostom († 407) draws a parallel between the birth of Christ from the Virgin and the formation of Adam from the soil of Eden, a name he says means ‘virgin earth’ in Hebrew (Expositio in Psalmum 44.7; De mutatione nominum 2.3),20 while his Western contemporary, Maximus of Turin († after 408) uses the same typology:
Adam was born of the virgin earth and Christ was generated by the Virgin Mary. The maternal soil of the former had not yet been tilled by ploughs and the intimacy of the Mother of Jesus had never been violated by concupiscence. Adam was formed out of the mud by the hands of God; Christ was formed by the Spirit of God in the maternal womb. Both have God as Father, both have a virgin mother; both, as the Evangelist says, are sons of God. But Adam is a son by creation while Christ is [a Son] according to his substance. (Sermo 19.2)21
In these two authors, one sees a strong emphasis on the importance of Mary’s virginal intactness, which is linked both to the fierce doctrinal disputes that were taking place on the divinity and humanity of Christ (which would come to a head at the Councils of Ephesus, 431, and Chalcedon, 451), and to the increasingly enthusiastic embrace of virginity as a ‘white martyrdom’ to replace the blood sacrifice of the early Christians as the persecutions of the Roman emperors began to fade (Brown 2008; Reynolds 2012: ch. 2). Augustine († 430) links the symbolism of Mary as the earth both to her virginal conception and to Christ’s recapitulation of Adam:
The Word of God ‘became man’, as I just said, ‘formed from the seed of David, according to the flesh’ (Romans 1.3), as the Apostle says, that is, as it were, from the mud of the earth, while no man was yet working the earth, since no man had sexual relations with the Virgin, from whom Christ was born. ‘A spring rose out the earth, watering all the face of the earth’ (Genesis 2.6). The ‘face of the earth’, that is, ‘the splendour of the earth’, is quite rightly understood to be the Virgin Mother of the Lord, watered by the Holy Spirit, who is called ‘spring’ and ‘water’ in the Gospels; it is almost as if that Man who was placed in paradise to guard it had to be formed of that mud; placed, that is, in the will of the Father in order to fulfil and observe it.
(De Genesi contra Manichaeos 2.24.37)22
Here, in his polemic against the Manicheans, who saw the material world as inherently evil, Augustine, in the characteristic manner of a good exegete, draws together different passages from the Old and New Testaments to show how the Holy Spirit watered (which recalls both the impregnating dew of Judges 6 and the purifying water of baptism) the humanity of Mary so that she could give flesh to the Word, a flesh that he divinized, thereby fulfilling its original telos according to the will of the Father.
As a final example of the earth type, let us look at Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople († 446), of Syriac origin, and a key figure in the dispute with Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus, who addresses Mary thus: ‘O Seedless Earth, which blossomed with the fruit of salvation! O Virgin, who opened paradise for Adam! Rather she is more glorious than paradise, for paradise was merely the planting of God (cf. 1 Cor. 3:9) but she cultivated God himself in the flesh’ (Homily 4: On the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ).23 Here, although the rhetoric is more elaborate, the essential points are the same, that Mary conceived virginally, and that he who was born of her was truly God and man.
Proclus brings us to what was to become a standard practice, first in the Eastern Church, and later in the Latin West, namely the use of doxological strings of epithets for the Virgin, which relied heavily on typological and symbolic imagery, to which the Marian litanies of today, the liturgies, especially of the Eastern Churches, and many hymns, are heirs. Not by chance, nearly all of these texts were composed as sermons (some of which were intended to be sung or chanted), and therefore should be thought of in terms of a congregation that is participating in the liturgy of the Mass, which includes both the word of God and the Eucharist, which like Mary, are visible signs of God. Their purpose is not merely praise, but also doctrinal and didactic. The sermons of Proclus, which are replete with Old Testament typologies, and typical of the Byzantine rhetorical style of homiletics, played a key role in consolidating the use of Old Testament typologies for Mary in the Greek Church, and indirectly influenced the Latin tradition, which drew on the East for much of its Mariological doctrine and imagery (Constas 1995: 177). Most important is the sermon on the Theotokos that he delivered at the Council of Ephesus against Nestorius, who wished to deny the Virgin this title on the basis that she was the mother only of his humanity. This was vigorously opposed by the side that eventually prevailed, which included Proclus, on the basis that it divided Jesus into two different persons. Behind the masterly rhetoric and luxuriant imagery, one can still feel something of the passion with which it must have been composed and delivered:
She who called us here today is the Holy [Theotokos] Mary; the untarnished vessel of virginity, the spiritual paradise of the second Adam (see Rom. 5:14; I Cor. 15:21–22, 45–9); the workshop for the union of natures; the market place of the contract of salvation; the bridal chamber (Ps. 18:6) in which the Word took flesh in marriage; the living bush of human nature, which the fire of the divine birth-pang did not consume (Ex. 3.2); the veritable swift cloud (Is. 19.1, LXX) who carried in her body the one who rides upon the cherubim; the purest fleece drenched with the rain which came from heaven (Jg. 6:37–38), whereby the shepherd clothed himself with the sheep [ewe] (see Jn. 10.11); handmaid and mother (Lk. 1:38, 43), virgin and paradise; the only bridge for God to mankind; the awesome loom of the divine economy upon which the robe (Jn. 19:23) of union was ineffably woven. The loom-worker was the Holy Spirit; spinner the overshadowing power from on high (Lk. 1:35). The wool was the ancient fleece of Adam; the interlocking thread the spotless flesh of the Virgin. The weaver’s shuttle was propelled by the immeasurable grace of him who wore the robe; the artisan was the Word who entered in through her sense of hearing.
(Homily 1: On the Holy Virgin Theotokos)24
In this magnificent display of Christian rhetoric, delivered in the Great Church of Constantinople in the presence of Nestorius, the Patriarch seamlessly brings together the Old Testament and the New to make the point that the entire Trinity worked together, with the co-operation of Mary, to bind divine and human natures together. First, we find the references to Pauline recapitulation, which Justin Martyr and Ireneaus had first used, then a reference to the bridal chamber, a favourite of Ephrem (Hymns on the Nativity 17.6),25 which, alongside extensive exegesis of the Song of Songs in a Marian key, will become a favourite in Medieval Mariology. Next, the use of the burning bush type, which goes back at least as far as Ephrem (Diatessaron 1.25),26 and is also found in other Syriac hymns (Brock 2010: 72) both to express wonder at how a finite creature could contain the infinite God without being destroyed, and also to make the doctrinal claim of Mary’s virginitas in partu, the belief that she remained intact in giving birth, which was held to be a sign of the divine origins of the child. The swift cloud, again found in Syriac sources (Brock 2010: 4) as well as in Ambrose (Expositio in psalmum 118.5.3),27 indicates the flesh that the Word takes from Mary, which is light and luminous, recalling in particular the cloud that covered the tabernacle (Exod. 40:34), and the cloud in which the Lord hid himself when he went into Egypt (Isa. 19.1). Both in Mary and in the Old Testmament types, God hides himself, above all in order to attenuate his brilliance so that those who behold him will not be overcome, but in the case of Mary, ‘the untarnished vessel’, in other words the new, living Ark of the Covenant, another favourite Patristic type, the Lord issues forth from the tabernacle to meet his people. The type of the fleece we have come across before, but here Proclus uses it with extraoridinary imagination to convey how the Incarnation united humanity to God in the Virgin’s womb. Throughout this passage, there is the unmistakable mark of Syriac imagery, nowhere more so than in figuring the body as a robe, which, of course allows Proclus to play with Jesus’ self-denomination as shepherd. Of course, a further layer of typological symbolism here is the contrast between Adam and Eve, who are ashamed at their nakedness after the fall, and Mary who ‘weaves’ a body for Christ. Perhaps there are also echoes here of the apocraphyl Protoevangelium of St James, which recounts that Mary, only recently betrothed to Joseph, was summoned by the High Priest to take part in the weaving of the veil of the Temple, and received the purple bolt by lot, symbolic of her royal status (see Exod. 25:3–4) prefiguring the rending of the veil when Christ yields up his spirit (Luke 23:44). Mary brings the bolt home and is described as weaving at the time of the Annunciation (subsequently transformed into a spinning wheel in many Annuciation scenes). In some ways, dissecting a passage like this takes away something of its impact, like Sherlock Holmes explaining how he has deduced something. One must not get too bogged down in the technicalities but also admire the overall effect, as no doubt some of the congregation did, although probably not Nestorius.
By far the greatest and most influential hymn of praise to the Virgin to emerge from the Greek Church was the Akathistos Hymn, an anonymous composition of 144 salutations, which is divided into two sections of twelve strophes, the first being more narrative and the second predominantly doctrinal, probably dating from sometime between Ephesus and Chalcedon, although there is still no consensus as to date and author (see Peltomaa 2001: 113–14). I do not have the space here to do it anything like the justice it deserves, not least because it continues to play a central role in Orthodox liturgy, and, as Meersseman’s (1958–60) monumental study has shown, had a profound impact on Western Mariology after it was translated into Latin in the ninth century. Fortunately, however, we have some excellent translations and studies of the hymn, not least Peltomaa’s from which I quote:
As we sing in honour of your giving birth,
we all praise you as a living temple, O Theotokos.
For the Lord who holds all in his hands
dwelt in your womb—
made you holy, made you glorious, and taught us all to cry to you:
Hail, tabernacle of God and the Word;
Hail, greater than the Holy of Holies;
Hail, ark gilded by the Spirit;
Hail, inexhaustible treasury of life;
Hail, precious diadem of pious kings;
Hail, holy exaltation of devout priests;
Hail immovable tower of the Church;
Hail, impregnable wall of the kingdom;
Hail, through whom trophies are raised up;
Hail, through whom enemies fall;
Hail, healing of my body;
Hail, protection of my soul;
Hail, bride unwedded.
(Akathistos 23.1–18)28
This penultimate strophe gives a good taste of the overall tone of the hymn, which is unique in the richness of its metaphorical language and abundance of typologies. To speak of Mary as a type of the Temple was still relatively rare at this time, although it suits the writer’s purpose of emphasizing Mary’s sacred status, and also fits in with the later architectural images of the Virgin as a fortress. The early Fathers wrote of Christ’s body or human nature as the temple of his divinity (Tertullian †c. 230, Adversus Marcionem 3.17.3)29 on the basis of Proverbs 1:9, but by the third century, the type was also being applied to Mary. Origen (†c. 254) is perhaps the first of the Fathers to suggest that Mary received the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit (Homilies on Luke 8),30 while Gregory Nazianzen († 390) interprets the seven-pillared temple both as Christ’s human nature and as Mary’s womb, which contained the Incarnate Word. According to Gregory, the Holy Spirit sanctified the Virgin and prepared her womb so that it might become the temple of Christ, capable of conceiving virginally, while Jesus himself may also be called the temple, since he contained the Word, that is, Christ’s divine nature (Poemata 7).31 The following lines capture the awe in which Mary is to be held, greater even than the Ark of the Covenant, which commanded both fear and acclamation on the part of the ancient Hebrews. The first recorded use of the ark with reference to Mary that I have been able to find is in Hippolytus of Rome († 235), who draws a parallel between the incorruptible wood of the ark and the flesh that Christ received from the Virgin (In Danielem 4.24 and In Ps. 22),32 while in the following century Athanasius of Alexandria († 373) writes of the Virgin as the ark that contained the true manna (Homily of the Papyrus of Turin).33 Ephrem also speaks of Mary as the Ark of the Covenant, in defending her virginity: ‘O Ark of the Covenant that was closed and empty! And although it remained sealed it permitted the great seal of the King of kings to shine through from within’ (Hymns on the Nativity 12.3).34 Here, instead, it is her sacredness that is emphasized: she is holy and untouchable, and perilous for those who do not recognize her as Theotokos. In the Old Testament account, Huzzah is struck down for touching the ark (2 Sam. 6:6–11), a story that is reworked in a number of apocryphal Dormition stories, where the High Priest’s hand is withered because he dares to touch Mary’s funeral bier, and restored only when he believes in Christ (see Shoemaker 2002: 789–90). The message is clear: Mary is impregnable to the wiles of the enemy. As Theotokos, guarantor of the true doctrine concerning her Son’s humanity and divinity, she is the Defender of Orthodoxy, who will strike down all foes. Yet, the strophe ends on a gentle note, reminding us that for those who adhere to the true faith, hers is a gentle power that heals and protects: we too can be temples of divinity, and rise to eternal life, as Mary already has.
What Janaro calls a ‘hermeneutic of doxology’ (2006: 49, n.5) continued to dominate Eastern Mariology to the end of the Patristic era and beyond, while in the Latin Church, it was only after the turn of the millennium that such rich typological imagery began to flourish. Let me conclude as I began, with a passage from one of the trio of great Byzantine Fathers whose writings on the Virgin marked the high watermark of Patristic Marian typology, John of Damascus († 749). I leave it to the reader to seek the aletheia, or higher meaning so beloved of the Fathers:
You are the royal throne which angels surround, seeing upon it their very King and Lord. You are a spiritual Eden, holier and diviner than Eden of old. That Eden was the abode of the mortal Adam, whilst the Lord came from heaven to dwell in you. The ark foreshadowed you who bore the seed of the new world. You brought forth Christ, the salvation of the world, who destroyed sin and its angry waves. The burning bush was a figure of you, and the tablets of the law, and the ark of the testament. The golden urn and candelabra, the table and the flowering rod of Aaron were significant types of you. … Did not that flame foreshadow you, its burning fire an image of the divine fire within you? And Abraham’s tent most clearly pointed to you. By the Word of God dwelling in you, human nature produced the bread made of ashes, its first fruits, from your most pure womb, the first fruits kneaded into bread and cooked by divine fire, becoming his divine person, and his true substance of a living body quickened by a reasoning and intelligent soul. I had nearly forgotten Jacob’s ladder. Is it not evident to everyone that it prefigured you, … so are you placed between us, and have become the ladder of God’s relations with us, of him who took upon himself our weakness, uniting us to himself, and enabling humankind to see God. You have brought together what was parted. (First Homily on the Dormition 8–9)35