Conspicuously absent from the preceding chapter was reference to feasts of or devotion to the Virgin Mary, with the single exception of noting the 15 August listing of ‘Mary Theotokos’ in the fifth-century Armenian Lectionary. It is important to note, however, that as with the cult of the martyrs, some form of devotion to and veneration of Mary also appears to have existed quite early in Christian history.1 For this we need to take into account the shaping of early Christian Marian devotional piety by the mid-second- to early-third-century Protoevangelium of James, that apocryphal Syrian work which, as Robert Eno notes, is ‘unusual in that it showed some interest in and development on Mary for her own sake’.2 This Gospel, termed doctrinally ‘orthodox’ by George Tavard,3
• gives us the names of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna;
• defends Mary’s virginitas in partu and even post partum in rather graphic detail;
• provides us with the narrative contents of what will become two Marian feasts later in the Christian East and West, that is, her Nativity on 8 September, and, when she was three years old, her Presentation in the Temple on 21 November;4
• associates her closely with the Jerusalem Temple, and describes her as a ‘weaver’ of the purple and scarlet for the Temple veil, both images that, according to Nicholas Constas, will have a great influence on the Marian theology of Proclus of Constantinople in the fifth-century controversy with Nestorius5 (indeed, the Virgin Mary as the ‘Ark’ or ‘Tabernacle’ in which the Logos made flesh dwells will be well attested in later Greek patristic literature6).
All of this is already in place – at least in this text – by the end of the second or beginning of the third century! That this narrative somehow remained dormant for two or three centuries and then, all of a sudden, is ‘discovered’ and starts suggesting Marian feasts, imagery and theology seems to us rather unlikely.
Within this context early Christian catacomb art should also be reconsidered. In the Roman catacombs of St Priscilla and the Cimitero Maggiore one sees two famous images of a woman and young child, which tour guides today regularly designate as early (second-century) representations of the Virgin and Christ Child. Art historian André Grabar, however, writes:
But who can provide any final solution to the puzzling scene in the catacomb of Priscilla, where one person seems to point to a star in the presence of a woman and child? And who can identify with any certainty, in the catacombs of the Cimitero Maggiore, the mother and child who appear with a monogram of Christ on either side and are flanked by two donors? Is this really the Virgin Mary, or is this some Christian woman with her child?7
But, of course, whatever early hermeneutical key might have been available to interpret such iconographic depictions of a ‘Christian woman with her child’ would have long been replaced by the interpretative lens or key provided by the Virgin and Child. And, given the overall context that appears to have been developing with regard to Marian symbols and theology, it would be surprising if, at least, the possibly third-century St Priscilla image did not come quickly to be interpreted as the prophet Balaam or Isaiah pointing to the star of Jacob and the woman with her child as the Virgin and Christ Child.8
Further, even the term Theotokos seems now to have been used earlier and rather more widely than many have assumed previously. Some modern biblical scholars, in fact, would push the evidence for the idea, if not the title, back into the New Testament infancy narratives, where, at least, Elizabeth’s designation of Mary as ‘Mother of my Lord’ (Luke 1.43) may well mean ‘Mother of Yahweh’!9 Similarly, Ignatius of Antioch, in his letter to the Ephesians, says ‘our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary by the dispensation of God’.10 And by the beginning of the third century the word Μ
τηρ in reference to Mary was starting to appear in an abbreviated form (MP) as a nomen sacrum in New Testament papyri.11 At the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century the word may have appeared in a lost treatise of Pierius (d. 309) called Περì τ
ς θεοτόκου12 and in a fragment attributed to Peter I of Alexandria.13
If not earlier already, the term Theotokos appears to have been used by the mid third century in Egypt. The Byzantine historian Socrates provides the following information about Origen of Alexandria:
Origen … in the first volume of his Commentaries on the apostle’s epistle to the Romans, gives an ample exposition of the sense in which the term Theotokos is used. It is therefore obvious that Nestorius had very little acquaintance with the treatises of the ancients, and for that reason … objected to the word only; for that he does not assert Christ to be a mere man, as Photinus did or Paul of Samosata, his own published homilies fully demonstrate.14
Unfortunately, the Greek text of Origen’s Commentary on Romans is lost and Rufinus’ Latin translation omits any reference to the term in the section of chapter 1 where it may once have been present. In her recent critical edition of this commentary, however, Caroline P. Hammond Bammel does indicate in the notes where the term may have occurred in the Greek text, as part of Origen’s comments on the description by Paul in 1.3–4 of Christ being both the Son of God and Son of David in the flesh.15
Apart from Socrates’ statement, there are other references to Theotokos in at least two fragments of Origen’s writings, which do tend to be considered authentic. According to a search of Origen’s writings on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, there are three occurrences of the term in Fragmenta in Lucam (not surprisingly, all in the context of Luke 2) and one appearance in Selecta in Deuteronomium. In other words, there are, including Socrates’ text, as many as five possible references to the Theotokos in Origen’s writings. And, as Marek Starowieyski notes, while theologians often contest this ‘evidence’, patristic scholars generally accept it!16
It is also in the same third-century context of Origen, and Egyptian Christianity in general, where scholars have often dated the famous and earliest short Marian prayer, usually called by its Latin title, Sub tuum praesidium, and translated as:
To your protection we flee, holy Mother of God (Theotokos):
do not despise our prayers in [our] needs,
but deliver us from all dangers,
glorious and blessed Virgin.17
Used liturgically in the Coptic, Greek and Ambrosian Rites (for which the evidence is no earlier than the fifth and sixth century), and in the Roman Rite (for which evidence is no earlier than the seventh), the somewhat corrupted Greek version of this text in the manuscript published by C. H. Roberts in 1938 has been viewed as third century or even earlier.18 But even if the text of the Sub tuum praesidium is no older than the early fourth century, it remains the earliest Marian prayer in existence – unless the greetings to Mary of the angel and Elizabeth (Luke 1) are already Christian hymn texts themselves – and testifies at least to some kind of Marian devotional piety well before Ephesus. Indeed, it was already in the middle of the fourth century that Emperor Julian the Apostate in his Against the Galileans criticized ‘the superstition of Christians for invoking the Theotokos’!19
At the same time, there is nothing in this prayer of supplication to the Theotokos that would be inconsistent with Origen’s own advocating of prayer to the saints, as we saw in the previous chapter,20 nor with his quite possible use of the title Theotokos in the third century. There is also nothing really inconsistent here between this Sub tuum praesidium prayer and the reference to the saints in the Strasbourg Papyrus we also noted in the previous chapter. But whatever one might conclude about Marian devotional piety in the first three centuries, certainly by the middle of the fourth century prayers, hymns and other texts illustrate that such devotion, and not only the title Theotokos, was becoming rather widespread.
In the time period of the mid to late fourth century the term Theotokos was generally being used in this sense of a widespread title, without necessarily implying a particular Christological or doctrinal position. Such, at least, is the conclusion of Marek Starowieyski, who provides an impressive list of fourth-century and early (pre-Ephesine) fifth-century authors where the title appears.21 Since this list includes Orthodox, Arian, Arianizing, Apollinarist and anti-Apollinarist authors, Starowieyski rightly concludes:
[L]e terme est employé, même s’il ne s’accorde pas avec leur christologie respective. Ce titre n’a donc pas de repercussions sur leur théologie ni leur théologie sur le titre … Les texts proviennent d’Egypte – certainement le plus grand nombre, de Palestine, du Syrie, de Mésopotamie, d’Arabie, d’Asie Mineure. Leur emploi est donc général dans toute la region de la Mediterranée. En prenant en considération le contexte, on constate que le titre Θεοτόκος n’est employé que comme une simple appellation, à l’exception des textes de la fin du IVe s.22
In the first quarter of the fourth century, therefore, that is, about one hundred years before the Council of Ephesus itself, the term Theotokos had already become – or was becoming – a common title for the Virgin Mary.
Sebastian Brock has drawn attention to the presence of the title ‘Mother of God’ in East Syrian liturgical texts and to the rich poetic imagery regarding Mary in the authentic hymns of Ephrem.23 Two examples of this, clearly reflecting the ancient patristic Eve–Mary typology, follow:
The virgin earth of old gave birth to the Adam who is lord of the earth,
But today another virgin has given birth to the Adam who is Lord of heaven. (Homily on the Nativity I, 16).
Adam brought forth travail upon the woman who sprang from him,
But today she (Mary), who bore him a Saviour, has redeemed that travail.
A man (Adam) who himself knew no birth, bore Eve the mother:
How much more should Eve’s daughter (Mary) be believed to have given birth without the aid of a man (Homily on the Nativity I, 14–15).24
Of special interest as well, Ephrem relates the baptismal womb of the Jordan to the womb of Mary in giving birth to Christ and even views the Incarnation of Christ as Mary’s own baptism:
O Christ, you have given birth to your own mother
In the second birth that comes from water …
The Son of the Most High came and dwelt in me,
And I became his mother. As I gave birth to him,
– His second birth – so too he gave birth to me
A second time. He put on his mother’s robe
– His body; I put on his glory. (Homily on the Nativity XVI, 9, 11)
Fire and Spirit are in the womb of her who bore you,
Fire and Spirit are in the river in which you were baptized,
Fire and Spirit are in our baptism,
And in the Bread and Cup is Fire and Holy Spirit.
(Homily on Faith X, 17)25
It is on the basis of such Marian imagery, clearly reflecting an incarnational-sacramental-liturgical context, that Brock can conclude:
[I]n actual fact, the Christological differences that separate the Syrian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox (Chalcedonian) Churches and the Church of the East do not appear to have had much effect on their attitudes to Mary … Thus those who are familiar with the Byzantine tradition will find much of what Syriac writers say on the subject of Mary not unfamiliar.26
If some kind of poetic devotion is present in mid-fourth-century Syria in Ephrem, developing Marian devotion and theology certainly also have a place at the same time in Cappadocia. Gregory of Nazianzus has no qualms about declaring that ‘if anyone does not agree that Holy Mary is the Mother of God, he is at odds with the Godhead27.’ It is also Nazianzen who, in a story about Cyprian of Antioch and the virgin Justina, refers to a prayer of intercession offered by Justina to ‘the Virgin Mary, imploring her to help a virgin in danger’.28 Similarly, Gregory of Nyssa in his treatise on virginity writes that death
found at last in virginity a barrier beyond which he could not pass. Just as in the time of Mary, the Mother of God, the Death who had reigned from Adam until then found, when he came to her and dashed his forces against the fruit of her virginity as against a rock, that he was himself shattered against her …29
And, of special interest in a devotional context, it is in his Vita Gregorii thaumaturgi where Nyssa refers to an apparition of both Mary (‘the mother of the Lord’) and the apostle John to Gregory the Wonderworker, thereby providing the first reference to a Marian apparition in the history of the Church.30 If, of course, neither of the above references to a prayer of intercession (Nazianzen) or to an apparition of Mary (Nyssa) tells us anything about the third-century context, they do ‘tell us … about the situation in the time of the writers’.31 For developing Marian devotional piety, that is what is significant.
That ‘there was a popular veneration for the Virgin Mother which threatened to run extravagant lengths’32 in the fourth century is attested by the Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis (315–403). According to his witness, not only was there in existence an anti-Marian group called the Antidicomarianites, who denied Mary’s perpetual virginity,33 but also an extreme pro-Marian group, known as the Collyridians (from κολλυρίδας, ‘cakes’), a group comprising mostly women who worshipped Mary as a ‘goddess’, offered to her and then consumed small cakes, and had a female priesthood. Epiphanius’ critique of the Collyridians, while certainly warning against excessive Marian piety, tends to be more about the subordinate role he believed that women should aspire to in the Church in imitation of the passivity of Mary. Nevertheless, if he is a credible witness here, we do not only see some developing Marian popular piety in the time period of the fourth century but we see that it was even prevalent enough to become problematic and heretical. As such, already in the fourth century we have some corroborating evidence for the statement of E. Ann Matter that ‘the practice of the pious often takes its own course’,34 a maxim that will be demonstrated over and over again especially in the later history of Marian doctrine and devotion even to our own day.
Perhaps, however, the best example of a popular Marian piety comes in early-fifth-century Constantinople on the very eve of the controversy with Nestorius and the resulting Council of Ephesus. In his studies of the theology of Proclus of Constantinople, Nicholas Constas refers us to the following event, which took place shortly after Nestorius had become Patriarch of Constantinople:
Nestorius was scandalized by the devotion to the Virgin which he encountered upon his arrival in Constantinople. Nestorius was further outraged to learn that during the reign of his predecessor the empress Pulcheria [whose spiritual advisor, in fact, had become Proclus] had been permitted to receive communion within the sanctuary of the Great Church. According to one source, Nestorius, barring the empress from the chancel screen, insisted that ‘Only priests may walk here,’ to which she replied, ‘Why, have I not given birth to God?’ ‘You?’ he retorted, ‘have given birth to Satan,’ and proceeded to drive Pulcheria from the sanctuary. Not long after this confrontation, Nestorius publicly challenged the dignity of the Virgin Mary and began to preach against the propriety of calling her the Theotokos – the Birth-giver of God … The people of Constantinople, who are said to have been passionately devoted to theological discussion, were greatly offended at this. Besides, the term had been generally accepted by the bishops of the capital from at least the time of Gregory the Theologian. Unlike the term ‘homoousious’ … the title ‘Theotokos’ was a powerfully evocative word which belonged to the language of liturgy and devotion. As a result, local resistance to Nestorius formed quickly and was actively supported, and to a certain extent orchestrated by Proclus and Pulcheria.35
As this event certainly demonstrates, the ultimate dogmatic decision at Ephesus of Mary as Theotokos was not simply rooted in the theology of the unitive personhood of Christ but was also, undoubtedly, the product both of the lex orandi and popular piety and devotion. As far back as 1940, P. F. Mercenier had argued that
in defending himself against Nestorius with a relentlessness, one might say, St. Cyril does not battle only with an opinion or a scholarly word, but with an expression and a belief consecrated for a long time by liturgical usage … This would be a new application of the adage: Legem credendi statuat lex supplicandi.36
Indeed, consistent with the Marian theology of Nestorius’ predecessor, Atticus of Constantinople (d. 425), who had instructed Pulcheria and her sisters, Arcadia and Marina, that if they imitated the virginity and chastity of Mary, they would give birth to God mystically in their souls,37 Pulcheria’s Marian self-identification (‘Have I not given birth to God?’) indicates that such personal or popular devotion to the Theotokos could even become a kind of Marian mysticism.
The historical context of Proclus and Nestorius is also important for the history of Marian feasts since the first two words of Proclus’ famous homily delivered at the Great Church of Constantinople in the presence of Nestorius, probably in the year 430, make reference to ‘the Virgin’s festival’ being celebrated that day.38 While it is a matter of debate which Marian feast is intended by Proclus’ reference (Annunciation, the Sunday before, and the Sunday after Christmas have all been suggested), current scholarship has argued that the feast in question was probably the day after Christmas, 26 December, ‘a day on which the Byzantine Church continued to celebrate a “synaxis” in honor of the Theotokos’.39 In two places in his writings Athanasius refers to the necessity of keeping a ‘memory’ or ‘commemoration’ (µνµη) of Mary.40 Because of this, Jaroslav Pelikan, in line with the much earlier work of Martin Jugié41 and Hilda Graef,42 who both underscored the pre-Ephesine existence of a Marian ‘feast’ on the Sunday either before or after Christmas in the East, has suggested ‘that evidence and his language seem to make it plausible that such a commemoration of Mary was being kept already during his time and that his argument was based on it’.43 Such would make this Marian feast already associated with Christmas a mid-fourth-century reality at Alexandria. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that Athanasius may simply be referring to the memory of Mary or, perhaps, even to the type of commemoration of Mary in the eucharistic prayer. That the Virgin Mary ultimately should come to be commemorated liturgically in relationship to the feast of Christmas in both East and West is surely no surprise. But apart from Athanasius’ use of µνµη there is simply no clear evidence of such a feast prior to Proclus’ homily, and it is quite possible that this feast had been instituted at Constantinople no earlier than Atticus himself or Sisinnius (426–7).44 But that a feast associated so closely with Christmas should already be known by Athanasius does not seem likely. Indeed, our first reference to Christmas itself being celebrated in the East is usually dated c. 381.
This does not mean, however, that there was not a Marian feast or commemoration in existence prior to the fifth century or that Athanasius himself could not have known of its existence and celebration at Alexandria. Indeed, the oldest Marian feast in existence is usually identified as the 15 August celebration of Mary Theotokos, having its origins in Jerusalem and first documented in the fifth-century Armenian Lectionary, one of our major guides to liturgical life in late-fourth-century Jerusalem. The entry reads:
Com. MARY THEOTOKOS, at Second Mile from Bethlehem, 15 August
PS + ANT: 132 (a8)
O.T. LESSON: Isa. 7—10
APOSTLE: Gal. 3.29—4.7
ALL/PS: 110.1
GOSPEL: Luke 2.1–7.45
Pierre Jounel summarizes the standard theory about this feast succinctly:
The liturgical cult of Mary originated in Jerusalem, with the feast of August 15 as its foundation. Initially celebrated at the Kathisma or place where according to tradition Mary paused to rest before going on to Bethlehem, the feast was transferred, toward the end of the fifth century, to Gethsemane and the basilica where people venerated the tomb of the Virgin. The feast of Mary Theotokos thus became the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. At the end of the sixth century, Emperor Maurice ruled that this feast was to be celebrated throughout the empire.46
With regard to the 15 August date, however, various explanations have been offered, including seeing 15 August as but the date of the Kathisma’s dedication, or of Jerusalem deliberately distancing itself from Constantinople’s Christmas-related Marian feast since, as we have seen, it held out longer before succumbing to the new 25 December date for the celebration of Christ’s beginnings. But no one has been able to offer conclusive arguments beyond speculation as to why 15 August in particular became the date of this feast.
In his study of the date and contents of the feast, Walter Ray notes that a core structure present still in the liturgical calendar of the Armenian Lectionary displays what he calls a parallel ‘narrative framework’ to a calendrical structure also found ‘in the pre-Christian, Essene, or proto-Essene Book of Jubilees’, which centred on the story of Isaac. According to Ray, in the calendar and narrative world of Jubilees the festival of Pentecost on 3/15 (= 15 May), always a Sunday, was simultaneously the celebration of the birth of Isaac, who was conceived by Sarah nine months earlier on 6/15 (= 15 August!). And, significantly, it is the Isaac–Jesus typology emerging from this tradition that occupies the principal theological attention of St Paul, especially in his Galatian correspondence (see Gal. 4.21–31). Ray writes:
The Feast of Weeks, understood as the 15th of the third month, had particular meaning for the Jubilees calendar as the completion of the fifty days, the time of the ultimate fulfillment of covenant renewal which was both promised and foreshadowed in the birth of Isaac. In its Christian form the final day of the feast would have been remembered as the time of divine adoption of the community and the giving of the Spirit (Acts 2, Gal. 4.5–6), but also the time of particular revelation of the divine sonship of Jesus in the power of the Spirit, first in light of the resurrection/ascension (cf. Rom. 1.3, Acts 2.33) but also in light of his special birth (Luke 1.35) … We should perhaps add Christ’s baptism to the list, where we again find the themes of divine sonship and the coming of the Spirit … [I]n Luke-Acts both the birth and baptism of Jesus manifest the same narrative pattern as Pentecost.47
Interestingly enough, then, Jesus’ own beginnings, according to Ray, whether at his conception, his birth in Bethlehem, or at what might be called his ‘spiritual birth’ in the Jordan, have clear Pentecost connotations, quite possibly stemming from an early Jerusalem Christian adaptation of this ancient Qumran–Jubilees calendrical and narrative tradition. And, together with all of this, a compelling reason has been given for how the date of 15 August fits in with such emphases.
In developing this approach, Ray also takes into account the fact that one of the apparent anomalies of the Armenian Lectionary’s calendar of feasts is the presence of the Feast of the Infants or ‘Holy Innocents’ on 18 May in some manuscripts. Based on this feast in May, Botte had suggested many years earlier that the Jerusalem liturgy may have once had some sort of commemoration of Christ’s nativity in May as well.48 Ray summarizes:
The feast of the Infants in May is the remnant of the beginning of a course reading of the epistle to the Hebrews and the gospel of Matthew and of a feast of Christ’s nativity coinciding with Pentecost, dated according to the fixed-date Jubilees calendar to May 15. This commemoration of Christ’s nativity, along with the feast of Mary on August 15, understood as a commemoration of Christ’s conception, and the commemoration of Christ’s crucifixion at Passover, evidences a Christ cycle that mirrors an Isaac cycle in the calendar of Jubilees. There we read that ‘in the middle of the sixth month the Lord visited Sarah and did for her as he had said. And she conceived and bore a son in the third month, in the middle of the month … on the feast of the firstfruits of the harvest’ [Jubilees 16:12–13]. Jubilees is unique in pre-Christian literature in dating the sacrifice of Isaac to the time of Passover.49
Ray has made here a solid contribution not only to the study of the early liturgical year at Jerusalem but also to that of developing early Christian Mariology. In addition to establishing a compelling reason as to why 15 August should emerge as a date for a commemoration or celebration centred on the Incarnation of Christ in Mary, Ray, in so doing, has also pushed the possibility of a type of Marian commemoration or focus to a very early period as well. In fact, as he himself notes, even the earlier station for the feast, two or three miles from Bethlehem, is already part of the narrative of Christ’s birth in the Protoevangelium of James.50 Such, of course, would be consistent with what we have already seen, and it may be that if Athanasius has any feast in mind by his use of the word µνµη, it is this one. Although Egeria never refers to the existence of this feast in her diary, it must be noted that she generally makes no references to feasts in the sanctoral cycle at all.
At the same time, if Ray is correct in his analysis of the origins and development of this feast, it is the case then that the earliest so-called Marian feast, which will ultimately become her Dormition and/or Assumption, began as an early Jerusalem commemoration of the Incarnation or annunciation, nine months before a primitive celebration of Christ’s nativity. In other words, the origins of even this Marian feast, as with the 26 December feast in Constantinople or the much later 1 January feast of the Theotokos in Rome, appear to be closely tied both Christologically and calendrically with some type of nativity cycle.
The feast of Mary Theotokos on 15 August, of course, is not the only Marian feast in early Christianity. As noted above, there was in Constantinople by the early fifth century some kind of Marian feast on 26 December, a day which the Syrian churches also continue to celebrate as a feast of congratulations to the Mother of God. We noted above that both Jugié and Graef referred also to the existence of a Marian ‘feast’ on the Sunday before Christmas in the East.51 And, as we saw in our chapter on Advent, such is noted in the West as well, with the Sunday before Christmas becoming associated with the annunciation or Incarnation, including the reading of the Annunciation Gospel (Luke 1.26–38) either on that Sunday or a week before Christmas, in various Western liturgical traditions (e.g., Ravenna, Milan and Spain).52 The precise origins of the 25 March feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord, however, remain a mystery. Although 25 March is important in the Computation hypothesis for determining the 25 December date of Christmas, there is no evidence for this date being a commemoration specifically of the annunciation until the middle of the sixth century in the Christian East and only later in the West.53 Constantinople itself has been credited with the origins of the feast in 550, according to a letter of the Emperor Justinian, as well as hymns for the feast composed by Romanus the Melodist in the same year.54 At the same time, the Armenian Church, which, as we have seen, never accepted the 25 December date for the nativity, celebrates the annunciation on 6 April, and so it becomes difficult to know if this is not, in fact, the earlier tradition in the East.
Other Marian feasts in early Christianity, or feasts that, like the Annunciation, have Marian connotations, are the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple on 2 February and the Nativity of the Virgin Mary on 8 September. The Feast of the Presentation, called the Hypapante (Meeting) of Christ with Simeon and Anna, and later in the West Candlemas and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is known already in late-fourth-century Jerusalem, as documented by Egeria:
Note that the Fortieth Day after Epiphany is observed here with special magnificence. On this day they assemble in the Anastasis. Everyone gathers, and things are done with the same solemnity as the feast of Easter. All the presbyters preach first, then the bishop, and they interpret the passage from the Gospel about Joseph and Mary taking the Lord to the Temple, and about Simeon and the prophetess Anna, daughter of Phanuel, seeing the Lord, and what they said to him, and about the sacrifice offered by his parents. When all the rest has been done in the usual way, they celebrate the sacrament and have their dismissal.55
Forty days after Epiphany (6 January) places this feast on 13 February in Egeria’s time, which would have been transferred to 2 February when both the 25 December date for Christmas and this feast itself were accepted and received by other churches.56 But, again, consistent with the early Jerusalem festal structure, the Armenian Church continues to celebrate this feast on 13 February.
The 8 September feast of the Nativity of Mary appears to owe its origins in Jerusalem to the dedication of a church to Holy Mary next to the pool of Bethesda and near to the house of Anne, in which Mary was presumably born. This church may have been dedicated on 8 September 543, and the annual anniversary of this dedication may be the origins of the feast, the thematic contents of which were supplied by the Protoevangelium of James.57 While this explanation is probable, the mere fact that the church was built on this site may suggest, alternatively, that there was already a commemoration of Mary’s birth on 8 September in Jerusalem at this site that gave rise both to the feast and to the dedication of the church on this date, rather than the other way around.
These four Marian feasts, all having their origins in the Christian East, will be accepted at Rome by the seventh century, during which time Pope Sergius I (687–701), ordered public processions to be held in conjunction with them from the Church of St Hadrian in the Roman Forum to the Basilica of St Mary Major, the basilica itself having been dedicated to Mary shortly after the Council of Ephesus (431) by Pope Sixtus III (432–40) and associated, owing to its possession of Christ’s crib, as the Roman Church of the Nativity. Together with these four feasts, however, Rome also had its own indigenous feast of Mary under the title of the Theotokos on 1 January, the octave of Christmas, but there is no evidence for this feast before the seventh century. While other local Marian feasts would develop throughout the Christian world (e.g., a mid-January feast of Mary in sixth-century Gaul, the Dormition of Mary celebrated on 16 January in Egypt, and the feast of Mary’s Presentation in the Temple on 21 November, in relationship to yet another church in Jerusalem, the Nea or New Church, dedicated on 21 November 543), these five Marian feasts will remain the only Mary-related feasts in the general Roman calendar until the fourteenth century.58
Devotion to and liturgical celebration of Mary Theotokos did not spring up out of thin air or somehow fall out of heaven in a tin box in the context or aftermath of the Council of Ephesus. Nor did it begin to spread only after that council. Rather, such devotion is rooted in developing piety and devotion from at least the third century. As we have seen in this chapter:
• the title Theotokos, while, of course, Christological in a broad sense, appears as a more general honorific title for Mary among diverse fourth-century authors with diverse Christological positions! In other words, Theotokos as a title for Mary does not appear to be tied originally to a particular Christological position as a banner of orthodoxy as it will come to be at and after the Council of Ephesus – prior to that it is simply one honorific way in which to refer to Mary;
• the use of the title itself, as well as our earliest Marian prayer, the Sub tuum praesidium, may well be mid-third-century Alexandrian in origin, and Origen himself, as testified to by Socrates, may well have been the first to have used this title in theological discourse;
• such use of the title and devotion to the Theotokos, including liturgical use noted immediately above, appears to be consistent with the growing development of prayer and supplication to the saints, as attested in general by the cult of the martyrs and by Origen in particular;
• already by the beginning of the third century the Protoevangelium of James reflects an interest in Mary herself and provides several Marian elements which will develop further and become, ultimately, the content of theological reflection, liturgical feasts (e.g., her Nativity and Presentation in the Temple), and popular devotion to her in the life of the Church;
• the earliest Marian feast on 15 August in Jerusalem, quite possibly a commemoration of Jesus’ conception nine months before an earlier 15 May Jerusalem commemoration of his birth, rooted in the sectarian Jewish Jubilees tradition, would seem to place the origins of this feast back to within the earliest days of Christianity itself; and
• even the doctrinal controversy with Nestorius of Constantinople is not merely about doctrine, but rather, in the context of the late fourth and early fifth centuries, where Marian devotion is witnessed to not only in Egypt but in Cappadocia (Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus) and Syria (Ephrem) as well, the controversy is also devotional, as certainly indicated by what might be called the ‘Marian mysticism’ of Atticus, Pulcheria and Proclus.
Such elements suggest strongly that, as with the developing cult of the martyrs in antiquity, we need to view what happened historically in the increase of both liturgical and popular Marian piety and devotion, especially in the East, where the Christological focus of Theotokos has always remained stronger than in the West, as an evolution in piety and devotion and not as a revolution. Such an evolution, we would suggest, is consistent with what came before and was not something radically new or brought about simply by an elevated Christology. Again, as with devotion to the martyrs and saints, the building blocks of a later popular and liturgical Marian piety appear quite early.
–––––––––––––––––––––
1 See the helpful comments on this by Ignazio M. Calabuig, ‘The Liturgical Cult of Mary in the East and West’ in Anscar Chupungco (ed.), Handbook for Liturgical Studies 5 (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 2000), p. 228.
2 Robert Eno, ‘Mary and Her Role in Patristic Theology’ in H. George Anderson et al. (eds), The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary, Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue 8 (Minneapolis: Augsburg 1992), p. 164. ET of the Protoevangelium of James in Wilhelm Schneemelcher (ed.), New Testament Apocrypha 1 (2nd edn, Cambridge: James Clarke & Co/Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press 1991–2), pp. 370–88.
3 George Tavard, The Thousand Faces of the Virgin Mary (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1996), p. 19. On the influence of the Apocryphal Gospels on Marian piety and iconography, see Ioannis Karavidopoulos, ‘On the Information Concerning the Virgin Mary Contained in the Apocryphal Gospels’ in Maria Vassilaki (ed.), Mother of God; Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (Milan: Skira editore 2000), pp. 67–89.
4 See below, pp. 211–12.
5 Nicholas Constas, ‘Weaving the Body of God: Proclus of Constantinople, the Theotokos, and the Loom of the Flesh’, JECS 3 (1995), pp. 169–94.
6 See Gary Anderson, ‘Mary in the Old Testament’, Pro Ecclesia 16 (2007), pp. 33–55.
7 André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1968), p. 9. Our thanks to John Klentos of the Patriarch Athenagoras Institute, Berkeley, CA, for directing us to this reference.
8 See Sandro Carletti, Guide to the Catacombs of Priscilla (Vatican City: Pontifical Commission for Sacred Architecture 1982), pp. 21–3; also Averil Cameron, ‘The Early Cult of the Virgin’ in Vassilaki, Mother of God, p. 5.
9 See C. Kavin Rowe, ‘Luke and the Trinity: An Essay in Ecclesial Biblical Theology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 56 (2003), pp. 1–26.
10 Ignatius, Ephesians 18 (emphasis added). See also Ephesians 7; 19.
11 A. H. R. E. Paap, Nomina Sacra in the Greek Papyri of the First Five Centuries (Leiden: Brill 1959), p. 15.
12 See J. Quasten, Patrology 2 (Westminster: Newman Press 1953), p. 112.
13 Fragment 7 (PG 18:517B).
14 Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 7.32; ET from NPNF, 2nd Series 2, p. 171.
15 Caroline P. Hammond Bammel, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes: Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 1–3 (Freiburg: Herder 1990), p. 56.
16 Marek Starowieyski, ‘Le titre Θεοτόκος avant le concile d’Ephèse’, SP 19 (1989), pp. 236–42, here at p. 237: ‘Ce témoignage contesté souvent par le théologiens, est généralement accepté par les patrologues.’
17 ET from the Latin by Kilian McDonnell, ‘The Marian Liturgical Tradition’ in Maxwell E. Johnson (ed.), Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 2000), pp. 385–400, here at p. 387.
18 Text in C. H. Roberts, Catalogue of the Greek and Latin papyri in the John Rylands Library 3 (Manchester 1938), nr. 470. See also McDonnell, ‘The Marian Liturgical Tradition’; P. Feuillen Mercenier, ‘La plus ancienne prière à la Sainte Vierge: le Sub tuum praesidium’, Questions liturgiques et paroissiales 25 (1940), pp. 33–6.
19 As quoted in Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries; Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press 1996), p. 56.
20 See above, p. 181.
21 Starowieyski, ‘Le titre Θεοτόκος avant le concile d’Ephèse’.
22 ‘The term is employed, it seems, with no accord to their respective Christologies. This title has no repercussions on their theology, nor their theologies on the title. The texts come from Egypt (certainly the greater number), from Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia and Asia Minor. Its use is thus general in the Mediterranean region. In taking the context into consideration, it is certain that the title is only employed as a simple appellation, with the exception of texts from the end of the fourth century.’ Starowieyski, ‘Le titre Θεοτόκος avant le concile d’Ephèse’, p. 238.
23 Sebastian Brock, ‘Mary in Syriac Tradition’ in A. Stacpoole (ed.), Mary’s Place in Christian Dialogue (Wilton: Morehouse-Barlow 1982), pp. 182–91.
24 Brock, ‘Mary in Syriac Tradition’, pp. 186–7.
25 Brock, ‘Mary in Syriac Tradition’, p. 190.
26 Brock, ‘Mary in Syriac Tradition’, p. 183.
27 Letter to Cledonius the Priest, Against Apollinaris; ET from W. A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers 2 (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1979), pp. 40–1.
28 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 24; ET from Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion 1 (New York: Sheed and Ward 1963), p. 64.
29 ET from Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers 2, p. 44.
30 See PG 46:912. Such would explain why the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae provides some nine references to a homily on the Incarnation by Gregory the Wonderworker. This attribution, however, is not regarded as correct. See M. Jugié, ‘Les Homélies Mariales attribuées à Saint Grégoire le Thamaturge’, Analecta Bollandiana 43 (1925), pp. 86–95. At the same time, Jugié believed the vision itself to be authentic.
31 Eno, ‘Mary and Her Role in Patristic Theology’, p. 166.
32 Herbert Thurston, ‘Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary down to the Council of Nicaea’, The Catholic Encyclopedia 15 (New York: Robert Appleton 1913), pp. 459–60.
33 Panarion 79. Augustine himself (De haeresibus 56), based on Epiphanius, also refers to this group but not to the Collyridians.
34 As quoted in Elizabeth Johnson, Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (New York/London: Continuum 2003), p. 119.
35 Constas, ‘Weaving the Body of God’, pp. 173–5. See also Nicholas Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Homilies 1–5, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 66 (Leiden/Boston: Brill 2003).
36 Mercenier, ‘La plus ancienne prière à la Sainte Vierge’, p. 36.
37 See Constas, ‘Weaving the Body of God’, pp. 171–2.
38 Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, p. 136.
39 Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, p. 58.
40 Letter to Epictetus 4; Letter to Maximus the Philosopher 3.
41 Martin Jugié, ‘La Première Fête mariale en Orient et en Occident, l’Avent primitif’, Echos d’Orient 26 (1923), pp. 129–52.
42 Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion 1, p. 133.
43 Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries, p. 61.
44 See Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, p. 58; also Margot Fassler, ‘The First Marian Feast in Constantinople and Jerusalem: Chant Texts, Readings, and Homiletic Literature’ in Peter Jeffery (ed.), The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West: In Honor of Kenneth Levy (Woodbridge: Boydell Press 2001), pp. 29–42.
45 ET from John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (3rd edn, Warminster: Aris & Phillips 1999), p. 191.
46 Pierre Jounel, ‘The Year’ in A. G. Martimort et al. (eds), The Church at Prayer 4 (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1986), p. 131.
47 Walter Ray, ‘August 15 and the Development of the Jerusalem Calendar’ (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame 2000), p. 262.
48 Bernard Botte, Les Origines de la Noël et de l’Épiphanie, Textes et Études liturgiques 1 (Louvain: Abbaye de Mont César 1932), pp. 9ff.
49 Walter Ray, ‘Toward a Narrative-Critical Approach to the Study of Early Liturgy’ in M. E. Johnson and L. E. Phillips (eds), Studia Liturgica Diversa: Essays in Honor of Paul F. Bradshaw (Portland: The Pastoral Press 2004), pp. 3–30, here at p. 9.
50 See Ray, ‘August 15 and the Development of the Jerusalem Calendar’, pp. 56ff.
51 See above, p. 206. Stéphane Verhelst has argued, alternatively, that 15 August was originally a celebration of the nativity, held at the third milestone between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where Mary had not only rested but given birth to Jesus, according to the Protoevangelium of James and other later Jewish-Christian writings. A church eventually built on this spot, he argues, enshrined the place associated with the birth of Christ among Jewish Christians at Jerusalem. He sees the 15 August celebration as part of a Jewish-Christian response to the commemoration of the destruction of the Temple on the 9 of Av. See Stéphane Verhelst, ‘Le 15 Août, Le 9 Av e le Kathisme’, QL 82 (2001), pp. 161–91. We do not find Verhelst’s conclusions compelling, especially because, as with his theory on Lent (see above p. 96, n. 15), he is too dependent upon an alleged liturgical commemoration of the destruction of the Temple among the Jerusalem church, which, in turn, served to shape the Jerusalem calendar in general. This may have been the case, but there is no hard evidence that it was so.
52 See above, pp. 159, 164.
53 See Adolph Adam, The Liturgical Year: Its History and Meaning after the Reform of the Liturgy (New York: Pueblo 1981), p. 152.
54 See Calabuig, ‘The Liturgical Cult of Mary in the East and West’, p. 256.
55 Egeria, Itinerarium 26; ET from Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, pp. 147–8.
56 For studies of the origins and theology of the Feast of the Presentation, see K. W. Stevenson, ‘The Origins and Development of Candlemas: A Struggle for Identity and Coherence?’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 102 (1988), pp. 316–46; Martin F. Connell, Eternity Today: On the Liturgical Year 1 (New York/London: Continuum 2006), pp. 211–39; Nicholas Russo, ‘The Origins of Lent’ (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame 2009), pp. 109–25.
57 See Calabuig, ‘The Liturgical Cult of Mary in the East and West’, p. 254.
58 For the above, see Jounel, ‘The Year’, pp. 134–6. For further development of Marian feasts in both East and West, see also McDonnell, ‘The Marian Liturgical Tradition’; Calabuig, ‘The Liturgical Cult of Mary in the East and West’, esp. pp. 257–97; Neil J. Roy, ‘Mary and the Liturgical Year’ in Mark Miravalle (ed.), Mariology (Goleta, CA: Queenship Publishing, Seat of Wisdom Books 2007), esp. pp. 642–65.