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The Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Religious Development and Myth-Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Averil Cameron
Averil Cameron*
Affiliation:
Keble College, University of Oxford
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Extract

It is sometimes both necessary and useful to go backwards in history, to disentangle an earlier development not by the usual method of piecing together the contemporary evidence but by approaching it through the eyes of later generations. This is certainly true of the present subject. We can say with confidence that late antiquity, especially the period from the fifth century onwards, marked the formative stage in the growth of cult and veneration offered to Mary. Yet one of the most striking experiences in any attempt to disentangle this development is the gradual recognition of exactly how much of our understanding has been shaped by later ideas, wishes, and religious agendas. Investigation of this subject entails the attempt to deal with many texts which are in themselves extremely hard to date; and indeed some of the ‘evidence’ itself, at least the written evidence, turns out to consist of a tangle of later legend passing for history - so much so in fact that I am considerably less certain about the subject now than when I originally wrote about it over twenty years ago.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 39: The Church and Mary , 2004 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 Averil Cameron, ‘The Theotokos in sixth-century Constantinople: a city finds its symbol’, JThS, n.s. 29 (1978), 79-108; ‘The Virgin’s robe: an episode in the history of early seventh-century Constantinople’, Byzantion, 49 (1979), 42-56. See also ‘Images of authority: elites and icons in late-sixth century Byzantium’, P&P, 84 (Aug. 1979), 5-35 and The language of images; icons and Christian representation’, SCH, 28 (1992), 1-42. There is a substantial more recent bibliography. See for instance the essays in Vassilaki (the catalogue to the exhibition of icons of the Virgin at the Benaki Museum, Athens), and the further collection, Vassilaki, Maria, ed., Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2004)Google Scholar. See also Pelikan, Jaroslav, Mary Through the Centuries. Her Place in History and Culture (New Haven, CT, and London, 1996)Google Scholar; Gambero, Luigi S.M., Mary and the Fathers of the Church. The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought, Eng. trans, by Buffer, Thomas (San Francisco, 1999)Google Scholar; O’Carroll, Limberis; M., ed., Theotokos. A Theological Encyclopaedia (Wilmington, DA, 1982)Google Scholar. There is also much useful material in tic collection of translations and commentaries on later Marian homilies by Daley, Brian E. S J., On the Dormition of Mary. Early Patristic Homilies (Crestwood, NY, 1998)Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Tsironis, N., ‘The lament of the Virgin Mary from Romanos the Melode to George of Nicomedia’ (University of London, Ph.D. thesis, 1998)Google Scholar.

3 A particularly rich example, highly relevant to my subject, is the recent article by Carr, Annemarie Weyl, ‘Threads of authority: the Virgin Mary’s veil in the Middle Ages’, in Gordon, Stewart, ed., Robes and Honor. The Medieval World of Investiture (New York, 2001), 59–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For an interesting discussion of these difficulties with regard to the representation of angels, see Peers, Glenn, Subtle Bodies. Representing Angels in Byzantium (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2001)Google Scholar. The Virgin shared in the difficulties felt about the proper visual representation of Christ and the angels during Iconoclasm.

5 For the latter, see Eisner, Jas, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph. The Art of the Roman Empire AD 100-450 (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar, pl. 153 (at 228); for the former, Grabar, A., Byzantium: From the Death of Theodosius to the Rise of Islam (1966)Google Scholar, pl. 161. For the Virgin in early apse mosaics see Ihm, C., Die Programme der christhche Apsismalerei vom vierten Jahrhimdert bis zur Minedesachtenjahrlmnderts (Wiesbaden, 1960)Google Scholar, emphasising an imperial model; Spieser, J.-M., ‘The representation of Christ in the apses of early Christian churches’, Gesta, 37 (1998), 63–73 Google Scholar.

6 See Cameron, ‘The Theotokos’; J. Howard-Johnston, ‘The siege of Constantinople in 626’, in Cyril Mango and Gilbert Dagron, with the assistance of Geoffrey Greatrex, eds, Constantinople and its Hinterland (Aldershot, 1995), 131-42. Bissera V. Penchera, following Leslie Brubaker, argues that the association of icons of the Virgin with Constantinople post-dates Iconoclasm: ‘The supernatural protector of Constantinople: the Virgin and her icons in the tradition of the Avar siege’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 26 (2002), 2-41. However, the role ascribed to the Virgin in 626 does not depend only on the evidence of icons; cf Speck, P., ‘The Virgin’s help for Contantinople’, ibid., 27 (2003), 266–71 Google Scholar.

7 For the Roman icons of the Virgin see Belting, H., Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, 1994)Google Scholar; Andaloro, M., ‘L’icona cristiana e gli artisti’, in Ensoli, S. and Rocca, E. La, eds, Aurea Roma. Dalla citta pagana alia citta cristiana (Rome, 2000), 416–24 Google Scholar; Barber, Charles, ‘Early representations of the Mother of God’, in Vassilaki, , 243–61 Google Scholar.

8 For some examples see Cameron, The language of images’.

9 Cf. E. von Dobschiitz, ‘Maria Rhomaia’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 12 (1903), 173-214; also idem, Christusbilder. Untersuchungen zur christhchen Legende, Texte und Untersuchungen, 18 (Leipzig, 1899), Beilage VI B. A similar story is told of a Christ icon in the Letter of the Three Patriarch, on which see C. Walter, ‘Iconographical considerations’, in JA Munitiz, J. Chrysostomides, E. Harvalia-Crook and C. Dendriiios, The Letter of the Three Patriarch to Emperor Theophilos and Related Texts (Camberley, 1997), li-lxxviii, at lxi-lxiii. Such stories of the miraculous feats of icons during the Iconoclast period took shape in the late ninth century after the ending of the controversy in 843, a period of intense post hox justification of images and their cult; similarly the idea of the dedication of Constantinople to the Virgin belongs to the period after the Russian siege in 860: see Angelidi, C., Pulcheria. La castita al potere (c. 399-c. 453) (Milan, 1996), 134 Google Scholar.

10 See Belting, Likeness and Presence, 57; cf. Andrew of Crete, PG 97, col. 1304 B-C. Walter, ‘Iconographical considerations’, lv-lvi, rightly casts doubt on the story cited in the early fourteenth century by Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopoulos, PG 86.1, col. 165A, which envisaged this icon’s existence in the fifth century and attributed its acquisition to Eudocia; see also RJ. Wolff, ‘Footnote to an incident of the Latin occupation of Constantinople: the church and icon of the Hodegetria’, Traditio, 6 (1948), 319-28, and Angelidi, Pulcheria, 80-1. For wonder-working icons see also Munitiz, J., ‘Wonder-working icons in the letter to Theophilus’, in Garland, L., ed., Conformity and Non-conformity in Byzantium:, Papers given to the 8th Conference of the Australian Association of Byzantine Studies, University of New England, Australia, July 1993, Byzantinische Forschungen, 24 (Amsterdam, 1997), 115–23 Google Scholar, and Marie-France Auzepy, ‘L’Évolution de Pattitude face au miracle a Byzance (VIIe-IXe siècle)’, in Miracles, prodiges et merveilles au Moyen Age: XXVe Congres, Societe des historiens medievistes de I’enseignement superieurpublic (Paris, 1995), 31-46. It was one of the aims of the iconophiles at II Nicaea (787) to demonstrate that icons did indeed work miracles: ibid., 43. Andrew of Crete in the eighth century also composed four homilies on the Virgin: PG 97, cols 801-87, on which see Angelidi, C., ‘Homilies on the nativity of the Theotokos’, in Kaklamanes, S., Markopoulos, A. and Mavromatis, I., eds, Enthymesis. Festschrift N.M. Panagiotakis (Heraklion, 2000), 1–11 Google Scholar (in Greek) and further for Mariology in Andrew of Crete, Cunningham, Mary, ‘Andrew of Crete: a high-style preacher of the eighth century’, in Cunningham, Mary B. and Allen, Pauline, eds, Preacher and Audience. Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homilies (Leiden, 1998), 267–91 Google Scholar.

11 See Mango, Cyril, ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’, in Vassilaki, , 17–25, at 23–4 Google Scholar; the best overall account of much of the ground covered in this paper is given by Angelidi, Pulcheria. For Pulcheria see also the article by Kate Cooper, below, pp. 39-51

12 On the Hodegetria see several essays in Vassilaki, esp. C. Angelidi and T. Papamastorakis, ‘The veneration of the Virgin Hodegetria and the Hodègon monastery’, ibid., 373-85. The processions and rituals connected with the Hodegetria belong to the thirteenth century and later: see C. Angelidi, ‘Un texte patriographique et edifiant: le ‘discours narratif sur les Hodegoi’, Revue des etudes byzantines, 52 (1994), 113-49. For the British Museum Triumph of Orthodoxy icon see David Buckton, ed., Byzantium. Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture (1994), no. 140 (129-30).

13 For the cult of Thecla see Davis, Stephen, The Cult of St. Thecla (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar, who surveys the plentiful contemporary textual and material evidence, which provides a striking contrast to the evidence for a cult of Mary in the same period.

14 Davis argues for a major shrine of Thecla at Mareotis in Egypt, west of Alexandria, in addition to the main complex at Seleucia. She was depicted in Egypt at least from the fourth century on, and her cult later spread to many other Mediterranean centres.

15 See Dagron, G., ed., Vie et miracles de Sainte Thecle (Brussels, 1978)Google Scholar.

16 See Maraval, P., Lieux saints et pelerinages d’Orient. Histoire el geographic des origines a la conquete arabe (Paris, 1985)Google Scholar.

17 De aedificiis, I.3.6-8.

18 See my The early cult of the Virgin’, in Vassilaki, 3-15; also Raymond Brown et al., eds., Mary in the New Testament (London, 1978).

19 For the latter see Elliott, James K., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; E, de Strycker, La Forme la plus ancienne du Protevangile de Jacques, Subsidia Hagiographica, 33 (Brussels, 1961). The Gospel of Thomas fills out the ‘missing’ years of the childhood of Jesus in much the same way. The sinlessness of Mary was argued to have cancelled the shame brought on women by the sin of Eve, which had led to the curse of sexuality: Mary was the type of obedience against Eve’s disobedience. For a brief exposition see Elizabeth A. Clark, Women in the Early Church (Wilmington, DA, 1983), ch. 1, citing Irenaeus, Adversus haereseis, 3.22.4.

20 Panarion, 59, discussed e.g. by Carroll, M.P., The Cult of the Virgin Mary (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 42–8 Google Scholar; Benko, S., The Virgin Coddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology (Leiden, 1993), 170–95 Google Scholar.

21 See Brown, Peter, The Body and Society. Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), 351–2 Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., 357; cf. 3 59-62 on the differing views held e.g. by Jovinian.

23 For discussion of the earliest Constantinopolitan churches to the Virgin see Mango, , ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’, 17–19 Google Scholar. Good discussion also in Angelidi, Pulcheria, 123-4. Pace Holum, 164 n.90, the cathedral church of the Virgin at Ephesus is now dated to c.500; an earlier church had apparently been converted from the Hadrianic Olympieion; see Karwiese, S., ‘The church of Mary and the temple of Hadrian Olympius’, in Koester, H., ed., Ephesos. Metropolis of Asia, Harvard Theological Studies, 41 (Valley Forge, PA, 1995), 311–19 Google Scholar.

24 Adoration of the Magi: catacomb of Priscilla, late third century; catacomb of SS Mark and Marcellian, fourth century: see Mathews, Thomas F., The Clash of Gods. A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art, rev. edn (Princeton, NJ, 1999), 82–3 Google Scholar. Nativity: Rome, fourth century, ibid., 48-9; flight into Egypt: sarcophagus at Istanbul, fifth-sixth century, ibid. 45.

25 For brief discussion see Cameron, ‘Early cult’; for Ephrem, see Gambero, Mary and the Fathers, 108-19.

26 Though some inevitably reduced it to a clash of personalities: see below.

27 Socrates, Historia ecclasiastica, VII.23.

28 See Nicholas F. Constas, ‘“Weaving the body of God”: Proclus of Constantinople, the Theotokos and the loom of the flesh’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 3 (1995). 169-94, at 174 n.21.

29 Cyril: McGuckin, J.A., St Cyril of Alexandria, the Christological Controversy: its History, Theology and Texts (Leiden, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent brief account see Allen, Pauline, ‘The definition and enforcement of orthodoxy’, in Cameron, Averil, Ward-Perkins, Bryan, and Whitby, Michael, eds, The Cambridge Ancient History, XIV, Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors A.D. 425-600 (Cambridge, 2000), 811–34, at 811–12 Google Scholar. The many personal and other agendas of these few years are brought out by Constas, ‘Weaving the body of God’, 173; and see his Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2003).

30 Commonly cited accounts are Holum, 137-41, and Limberis. For the view that the Council of Ephesus was not concerned with Mary as such, but with doctrinal Christology, the Theotokos title being connected with kenotic theology, see Benko, The Virgin Goddess, 250-1, 253-9. Nevertheless there seems already to have been at least one feast of the Virgin: Jugie, M., ‘Homelies mariales byzantines: textes grecs edites et traduits en latin, II’, Patrologia Orientalis, 19 (Paris, 1926), 297–309 Google Scholar.

31 This homily became famous and was much quoted in later contexts: see Constas, , ‘Weaving the body of God’, 175 n.24 Google Scholar; imagery: 176-88. Constas wants to connect the loom image with Pulcheria’s weaving: 188-90. In modern literature this homily has become widely known through Constas’s article, but in fact it was only one of several; see also Peltomaa, Leena Mari, The Image of the Virgin in the Akathistos Hymn (Leiden, 2001), 101–12 Google Scholar; Holum, 13 9-41; and below.

32 See Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures (Hannover, NH, 2002), 104-6, at 105.

33 This is noted by Liz James, Empresses and Power in Early Byzantium (Leicester, 2001), e.g. 18, 66-8.

34 The present enthusiasm for Pulcheria derives in the main from Holum, who is followed by Limberis. For a more sceptical view see below, with Angelidi, Pulcheria and Peltomaa, Image of the Virgin, e.g. at 51 n.10, 57 n.53, in, 113.

35 This is suggested by the sixth-century poet Corippus of Sophia, wife of Justin II: see Averil Cameron, ‘The Empress Sophia’, Byzantion, 45 (1975), 4-21, at 12-13.

36 James, Empresses and Power, 143, notes the lack of explicit evidence for the assumption that empresses modelled themselves upon the figure of Mary.

37 See Garland, Lynda, Byzantine Empresses. Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527-1204 (London, 1999)Google Scholar, and Barbara Hill, Imperial Women in Byzantium, 1025-1204. Power, Patronage and Ideology (London, 1999). For this period see James, Empresses and Power, with her article ‘Goddess, whore, wife or slave: will the real Byzantine empress please stand up?’, in Anne J. Duggan, ed., Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe (Woodbridge, 1997), 123-40; also Brubaker, L., ‘Memories of Helena: patterns of imperial matronage in the fourth and fifth centuries’, in James, L., ed., Women, Men and Eunuchs. Gender in Byzantium (Aldershot, 1997), 52–75 Google Scholar. Judith Herrin, Women in Purple (2001), covers three eighth- and ninth-century imperial women, beginning with Irene.

38 Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica, VII.2,3; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica, IX.I, 10.

39 Especially Atticus, successor of John Chrysostom as Patriarch of Constantinople in 404, who urged the model on her: see Constas, ‘Weaving the body of God’, 171-3 with refs.

40 For Pulcheria’s supposed devotion to the Virgin see Holum, 145-6, 157 (followed by most recent writers); Limberis, 54-61; also the article by Kate Cooper elsewhere in this volume. James, Empresses and Power, 14, 39, 150, is more cautious. Limberis, 59, claims that ‘as a young woman Pulcheria had taken the Virgin Theotokos as the model for her life’.

41 Other religious patronage is also attributed to Pulcheria. For Pulcheria as the subject of the translation of relics represented in the variously dated Trier ivory see L. Brubaker, ‘The Chalke gate, the construction of the past and the Trier ivory’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 23 (1999), 258-85, at 271-7, with earlier bibliography. Brubaker accepts the subject as the translation of the relics of St Stephen to Constantinople in AD 421 but dates the ivory itself to the ninth century.

42 See Cyril Mango, The origins of the Blachernai shrine at Constantinople’, Acta XIII Congressus International Archaeologicae Christianae, 2 (Vatican City and Split, 1998), 61-76; Angelidi, Pulcheria, 73-4, 83.

43 See on Verina James, ‘Goddess, whore, wife or slave’, 33-4.

44 Cf. Cameron, ‘The Virgin’s robe’. For the texts see A. Wenger, L’Assomption de la Tres Sainte Vierge dans la tradition byzantine du Vie au Ve Steele, Archives de l’Orient chretien, 5 (Paris, 1955), with discussion.

45 See Mango, ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’, 19, with n.19. There was more than one girdle in existence at later dates, one of which Westminster Abbey claimed to possess and which was highly regarded in late medieval England: see Vincent, N., Holy Blood. King Henry III and the Westminster Blood Relic (Cambridge, 2001), 169–70 Google Scholar, with instructive comments on other relics of the Virgin, e.g. at 40-2.

46 Kate Cooper, ‘Contesting the Nativity: wives, virgins and Pulcheria’s imitatio Mariae’, Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, 19(1998), 31-43; see James, Empresses and Power, 18-19,67.

47 See Holum, 134, 137, 159.

48 So Atticus of Constantinople: Holum, 139-40.

49 E.g. Atticus, Proclus, Theodotus of Ancyra: Holum, 139-41, with refs.

50 See Benko, The Virgin Goddess, esp. ch. 6, ‘From devotion to doctrine’. Benko sees Mary’s Christological role as developing out of ‘popular, emotional piety’ (203), and implausibly connects the Protevangelium with the cult of Cybele.

51 For an example see Eisner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph, pl. 147, p. 221.

52 Artemis is also regarded in the texts as a pagan competitor of Thecla at Seleucia: Davis, Cult of St. Thecla, 44. However, this element of competition is not made explicit in the case of the Virgin.

53 See Limberis, 124-42.

54 Virgin and women: e.g., J. Herrin, ‘The imperial feminine in Byzantium’, P&P, 169 (Nov. 2000), 3-35, at 4-5, with bibliography; Herrin also associates the cult of the Virgin with an appropriation of the role of female deities and with Byzantine empresses.

55 See Carroll, The Cult of the Virgin Mary.

56 The source for the Emperor Maurice’s regularization in the late sixth century is late: Nicephorus Callistus, Historia ecclesiastica, 17.28, who despite the dating in fact puts it in the context of the reign of Justinian. However, the belief itself was already well established, and a homily by Theoteknos of Livias on the Assumption probably dates from the sixth century. The apocryphal accounts of the Dormition, a group of texts often referred to as the Transitus Mariae, go back to the fifth or early sixth centuries; see Esbroek, M. van, ‘Les Textes litteraires sur l’assomption avant le Xe siècle’, in Les Actes apocryphes des Apotres: Christianisme el mmute pa’ien (Geneva, 1981)Google Scholar [= Esbroek, M. van, Aux origines de la Dormition de la Vierge (London, 1995)Google Scholar, I], and cf. below, n.75. However in the late seventh century the Jerusalem pilgrim Arculf was reported to have visited the church of Mary, where he saw her empty tomb, but had nothing to say of a bodily assumption: Adomnan, De locis Sanctis, ed. L. Bieler, CCSL, 175 (Turnhout, 1965), 195.

57 This is clear in the three contemporary accounts: the homily of Theodore Synkellos, the Chronkon Paschale, and the poems of George of Pisidia, though despite Cameron, ‘Theotokos’, 79, 97, and cf. idem, ‘Elites and icons’, 20-4, the identity of the icon or icons deployed during the siege is not so certain. Some accounts envisage an acheiropoietos icon of Christ being carried round the walls: see Mango, ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’, 21-2.

58 So Peltomaa, Image of the Virgin, 113–14.

59 Angelidi, ‘Un texte patriographique’, 127-8.

60 So Mango, ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’.

61 See Herrin, ‘The imperial feminine in Byzantium’, 12.

62 Apart from S. Maria Maggiore (fifth century), the notable Marian churches known from the seventh-eighth centuries are S. Maria Antiqua, S. Maria ad Martyres and S. Maria in Trastevere; see Barber, ‘Early representations’.

63 For the complex origins of Marian feasts see also van Esbroek, Aux origines.

64 M. Jugie, La Mori el I’assomption de la Sainte Vierge. ituie historico-doctrinale, Studi e Testi, 114 (Vatican City, 1944), 82; Chronicon Paschale, 373. Possible sixth-century processions: Angelidi, Pulcheria, 127-8.

65 Barber, ‘Early representations’, 256 and n.16, makes a similar point, observing that while in the absence of relics icons serve as evidence, ampullae and cloths brought from sites associated with relics of the Theotokos ‘would have’ been good indicators. However, for ‘private’ evidence see H. Maguire, The cult of the Mother of God in private’, in Vassilaki, 279-89.

66 Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica, VII.5.1-4, cited by Mango, ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’, 17.

67 Having become the symbol of orthodoxy the Virgin was strikingly often linked in early Byzantine texts with the theme of the discomfiture of the Jews: see Stephen J. Shoemaker, ‘“Let us go and burn her body”: the image of the Jews in the early Dormition traditions’, Church History, 68 (1999), 775-823; idem, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (Oxford, 2002).

68 For example, the numerous ‘weeping Madonnas’ in modern Italy have typically been associated with the Catholic Right, or with areas of social deprivation (Times, 3 Feb. 2000).

69 Leslie Brubaker sees the ‘rise of icons’ as a seventh-century phenomenon, e.g. ‘Icons before Iconoclasm?’, in Morfologie sociali e culturali in Europafra tarda antichita e alto medieovo, 2 vols, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 45 (Spoleto, 1998), 1215-54.

70 See for some of this material Barber, ‘Early representations’; also Cameron, ‘Language of images’.

71 Herrin, ‘The imperial feminine’, 15-19, argues for a contrast between representations: a ‘humble’ eastern Virgin and a queenly western one. However, John of Damascus, for example, continues to refer to the Virgin as basilis: see Dormition, 1.2, in P. Voulet, ed. and trans., S.Jean Damascene. Homilies stir la Nativite et la Dormition, Sources chretiennes, 80 (Paris, 1961), 83. For references to the earlier discussion of the ‘Maria regina’ theme see V. Pace, ‘Between east and west’, in Vassilaki, 425-32, at 425. I am not convinced either of the strength of the east-west contrast or of the strong definition of the imperial Virgin type. Benko, The Virgin Goddess, 135, is right to say that the idea of Mary as Queen of Heaven is medieval, not early.

72 See Iole Kalavrezou, ‘Images of the mother: when the Virgin Mary became the Meter Theou’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 44 (1990), 165-72.

73 Angelidi, Pulcheria, 138, similarly emphasises the Christological element, while claiming that in the ninth century the Virgin acquired ‘una nuova fisionomia’; cf 121: ‘durante la prima meta del V secolo la questione mariana non era stata ancora risolta’.

74 See Mary Cunningham, ‘The Mother of God in early Byzantine homilies’, Sobomost, 10 (1988), 53-67; Caro, Robert, La homiletica Mariana griega en el sigh V, Marian Library Studies, 3 (Dayton, OH, 1971)Google Scholar. This evidence is also discussed in Tsironis, The Lament of the Virgin Mary, see also eadem, ‘The Mother of God in the Iconoclastic controversy’, in Vassilaki, 27-39. For Jacob of Serugh (fifth-sixth centuries) see Bedjan, P., ed., S Martyrii, quiet Sahdona quae supersunt omnia (Paris and Leipzig, 1902)Google Scholar.

75 Pauline Allen traces Mariological development in the fifth and sixth centuries, with an emphasis on the homilies of Severus of Antioch and the hymns of Romanos, in ‘Severus of Antioch and the homily; the end of the beginning?’, in Pauline Allen and Elizabeth Jeffreys, eds, The Sixth Century. End or Beginning?, Byzuntina Australiensia, 10 (Brisbane, 1996), 163-75.

76 The phrase is from Daley, On the Dormition of Mary, 7, and cf. 12 on the date. At 6, Daley says that after Chalcedon, ‘the figure of Mary emerged like a comet in Christian devotion and liturgical celebration throughout the world’. For comments on the liturgical and theological preoccupations in the texts which Daley translates cf. 28, 30.

77 E. Kitzinger, ‘The cult of images in the age before iconoclasm’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 8(1954), 134-50.

78 For this see Tsironis, The Lament of the Virgin Mary, ch. 2.

79 Ecclesiastical History, 3, cited by Robin Cormack, The Mother of God in apse mosaics’, in Vassilaki, 95; idem, The Mother of God in the mosaics of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople’, ibid., 111.