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The Idea of the Assumption of Mary in the West, 800–1200 (Presidential Address)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Henry Mayr-Harting
Henry Mayr-Harting*
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Christ Church Oxford
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Studies in Church History , Volume 39: The Church and Mary , 2004 , pp. 86 - 111
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Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 Peter Brown, The Body and Society (1988), 353-6.

2 C. Lambot, ‘L’homelie du Pseudo-Jerome sur l’Assomption et l’Évangile de la Nativite de Marie d’apres une lettre inedit d’Hincmar’, Revue Benedictine, 46 (1934), 265-82; supported by H. Barre, ‘La Lettre du Pseudo-Jerome sur l’Assomption: est-elle anterieure a Paschase Radbert?’, ibid., 68 (1958), 203-25.

3 William of Newburgh’s Explanatio sacri epithalamii in matrem sponsi: a Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, ed. John C. Gorman, in Spicilegium Friburgense 6 (Fribourg, 1966), 39-40, with rcfs to earlier literature.

4 Paschasii Radberti Departu virginis, ed. E. Ann Matter, and De assumptione sanctae Mariae virginis [i.e. Pseudo-Jerome, Cogitis me], ed. A. Ripberger, CChr.CM, 56C (Turnhout, 1985) [hereafter CChr.CM 56C], discussion of the MSS used for the edition at 99-105.

5 Ibid., 114-15.

6 Ibid., e.g., 116-17, 151, 134-5.

7 Mango, Cyril, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1972), 166 Google Scholar (for 754); Libri Carolini, ed. Ann Freeman, Mon. Germ. Hist. Concilia ii, supplementum i (Hanover, 1998), ii.27 (290-6, esp. 290 ll.17-25, 292 ll.20-5, 293 l.1519).

8 Radbertus, Pascasius, De corpore et sanguine domini, ed. Paulus, B., CChr.CM, 16 (Turnhout, 1969), 28 Google Scholar.

9 H. Barre, ‘La croyance a l’Assomption corporelle en Occident de 750 a 1150 environ’, Etudes Mariales, 7 (1950), 67-70; and Henry Mayr-Harting, Ottoman Book Illumination: an Historical Study, 2 vols (1991), 1:139 and 224 n.52.

10 CChr.CM 56C, 121 ll.228-9, 121 ll.219-20 (‘et bene angelus ad virginem mittitur, quia semper est angelis cognata virginitas’), 121 ll.222-3, 125 ll.302-4, 130 11.403-4, 1271.344 (‘super choros angelorum exaltata’), 129 11.384-6 (‘ad cuius profecto exsequias, quantum fas est credere, famulabantur angeli’).

11 Luscombe, David, ‘The reception of the writings of Denis the pseudo-Areopagite into England’, in Greenway, Diana, et al., eds, Tradition and Change: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Chibnall (Cambridge, 1985), 116–21 Google Scholar.

12 E.g. Boeckler, A., ‘Das Erhardbild im Utacodex’, in Miner, Dorothy, ed., Studies for Belle da Costa Greene (Princeton, NJ, 1954), 219–30 Google Scholar; Mayr-Harting, Henry, Perceptions of Angeb in History (Oxford, 1998), 15, 25 Google Scholar n.61.

13 Cf Trevor Johnson, on Mary, ‘filled with grace and gifts above the highest seraphim’, citing Maria de Jesus de Agreda, The Mystical City of God: below, p. 262.

14 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 13601 (Uta Codex), fol. 2r; Cohen, Adam S., The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy and Reform in Eleventh-Century Germany (University Park, PA, 2000), 47 Google Scholar. The phrase is perhaps not as rare as Cohen maintains. To give some easily to hand eleventh-century examples, Thietmar of Merseburg uses it around the same time: Tiiielmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed. R. Holtzmann (Berlin, 1955), 173 l.u. Domina gentium, which amounts to much the same thing, is used by Maurilius of Rouen (PL 158, col. 947C), and regina mundi by Peter Damian (Sancti Petri Damiani Sermones, ed. J. Lucchesi, CChr.CM, 57 (Turnholt, 1983), 281 I.245).

15 Hrotsvit Opera omnia, ed. Walter Berschin (Munich and Leipzig, 2001), 4 11.13-14.

16 Homily on the beginning of St Matthew’s Gospel, PL 114, col. 859B, cited by Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2 vols (1963), 1:175; and for the likely eighth-century date of the Ave maris Stella, ibid., 174.

17 Ohly, Friedrich, Hohenlied-Studien (Wiesbaden, 1958), 69–92 Google Scholar, and 92 n.i; Sabbe, E., ‘Le Culte Mariale et la genese de la sculpture mediévale’, Revue beige d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art, 20 (1950), 101–25 Google Scholar.

18 E.g. of Cogitis me, largely of Otto III, or Hrotsvita of Gandersheim, or the Uta Codex, of Reichenau culture, etc.

19 Mayr-Harting, Ottoman Book Illumination, 1:141, 225 n.61.

20 Die Laleinischen Dichter des Deutschen Mitlelalters, Die Ottonenzeit, ed. Karl Strecker and Gabriel Silagi, MGH, Poetae Latini Medii Aevi, 5, 3 parts (Leipzig, Berlin, and Munich, 1937-79; pts 1-2 reprinted in 1 vol., Munich, 1978), 465-8.

21 Ibid., 468-9, cf. Hartmut Hoffmann, Bamberger Hattdschrifteti des 10. und des 11. Jahrhunderts, MGH Schriften, 39 (Hanover, 1995), 160-1 (MS Patr. 88).

22 That there is an erasure is clear. The name of Otto cannot be read underneath it, and therefore caution is necessary, but that is the likeliest explanation; see note in Strecker and Silagi, Lateiniseher Dichter, 468.

23 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 445 3; Das Evangeliar Ottos III: CLM 4453 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek Munchen, ed. F. Dressier, F. Miitherich, and H. Beumann, 2 vols (Frankfurt, 1977-8), 1, esp. 23-4. Ulrich Kuder, ‘Die Ottonen in der ottonischen Buchmalerei: Identification und Ikonographie’, in Gerd Althoff and Ernst Schubert, eds, Herrschaftsreprdsentation im ottonischen Sachsen (Sigmaringen, 1998), 193-4, would date this book to the reign of Henry II (1002-24); but his brief arguments lack all conviction.

24 Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, 1:147, fig. 86; BN, MS lat. 9448, fol. 6ov; Ottonis III diplomata, MGH Diplomatum regum et imperatorum Germaniae, 2/ii (Hanover, 1893), no. 262.

25 Mayr-Harting, Ottoman Book Illumination, 1:151-2 and Colour Plate XXII.

26 Ibid., 1:150 and Colour Plates XIV-XVII.

27 Ibid., 1:95-105 and figs 49-50.

28 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MSS Aug. CXXIX, LXXX. See Wenger, A., L’Assomption de la T.S. Vierge dans la tradition Byzantine du Vie au Xe siecle: etudes et documents (Paris, 1955), 17–95, 209–69 Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., esp. 319, para. 4; cf. 160.

30 Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, 1:142-3.

31 Sinding, O., Marine Tod und Himmelfahrt (Christiania, 1903), 33–4 Google Scholar, citing the Liber pontificalis.

32 Marina Warner, Atone of All Her Sex (1974), 104.

33 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronkon, 4.10 (ed. Holtzmann, 142).

34 The Byzantine precedents for this do not make it less striking in its context; see Erkens, F.-R., ‘Die Frau als Hcrrscherin in ottonish-fruhsalischer Zeit’Google Scholar, and Johannes Laudage, ‘Das Problem dcr Vormundschaft iiber Otto III’, both in Anton von Euw and Peter Schreiner, eds, Kaiserin Theophanu, 2 (Cologne, 1991), 256-57, 268-71. See also Karl Leyser, Theophanu divina gratia imperatrix augusta: western and eastern emperorship in the later tenth century’, in his Communication and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottoman Centuries, ed. Timothy Reuter (1994), 143-64.

35 Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Women’s stories, women’s symbols: a critique of Victor Turner’s theory of liminality’, in her Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1991), esp. 34-7.

36 PL 158, cols 946-7.

37 R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (1953), 246-54.

38 PL 15 8, col. 947C.

39 In Cogitis me, e.g. CChr.CM 56C, 149-52. See also Mayr-Harting, Ottoman Book Illumination, 2:42 (where the lack of Mariological significance is exaggerated), and Cohen, Uta Codex, 47-8.

40 See Rachel Fulton, ‘Mimetic devotion, Marian exegesis and the historical sense of the Song of Songs’, Viator, 27 (1996), 85-116. This important paper, to which Susan Boynton drew my attention, raises wide issues. My purposes in the study of these commentaries have been more limited.

41 Engen, John H. van, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley, CA, 1983), 26–42 Google Scholar.

42 Ruperti Tuitiensis Commentaria in Canticum canticorum, ed. H. Haacke, CChr.CM, 26 (Turnholt, 1974) [hereafter CChr.CM 26], 65 H.193-6, 163-4.

43 R.W. and Carlyle, A.J., A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, 6 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1903-36), 4:291 Google Scholar. Rupert closely anticipates Gerhoh of Reichersberg, who though no outright papalist, was even less of an imperialist, ibid., 4:3 56-7.

44 H. Fichtenau, ‘Riesenbibeln in Osterreich und Mathilde von Tuszien’, in his Beitrage zur Mediavistik, i (Stuttgart, 1975), 163-86; I.S. Robinson, ‘The metrical Commentary on Genesis of Donizo of Canossa’, Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale, 41 (1974), 5–37.

45 CChr.CM 26, 89 U.164-7; cf. ibid., 241.495, where in the same connection (S. of S. 1.6) Mary is called ‘magistra magistrorum, id est apostolorum’. This, rather than a general connection to the Immaculate Conception, a feast propagated by Abbot Geoffrey of St Albans but a doctrine denied by Rupert, is the likeliest explanation for the novel Pentecost iconography and the exceptional prominence (for the time) given to Mary in the St Albans’ Psalter c. 1130, rather than a source such as Odilo of Cluny’s sermon on the Assumption, as Otto Pacht would argue, in Otto Pacht et al., The St Alban’s Psalter (1960), 67-70. For Rupert represents Mary as a teacher of the Apostles. True, Rupert’s circulation was in the Empire (van Engen, Rupert, 291), but imperial artistic influence figures large in the Psalter.

46 van Engen, Rupert, 296.

47 Ibid., 296-7.

48 CChr.CM 26, 147 ll.534-5; and on the mirror to churches, ibid., 106 ll.39-47.

49 This is made very clear in the celebrated letter of Osbert of Clare, Prior of Westmin ster to Anselm of St Saba, Abbot of Bury St Edmund (1129): The Letters of Osbert of Clare, ed. E.W. Williamson (Oxford, 1929), no. 7 (65-8). Against the challenge of Roger of Salisbury and Bernard of St Davids on the day itself, the monks carried the celebration of the festival through (ibid., 65).

50 Sermones inediti Aelredi abbatis Rievallensis, ed. C.H. Talbot, Series Scriptorum S. Ordinis Cisterciensis, 1 (Rome, 1952), 20, on the Cistercians and the Immaculate Conception, which was very much a black-monk agendum. For the Cistercians and the Assumption see below and n.55 below. Also for Ailred himself, see Sermones, 136 H.21-2: ‘Fecit [i.e. Christ] et sibi hodie thronum beatissime virginis corpus et animam.’

51 Die Visionen und Briefe der hi Elisabeth, sowie die Schriften der Aebte Ekbert und Emecho von Schonau, ed. F.W.E. Roth (Brunn, 1886), 53-5. See Clark, Anne L., Elisabeth of Schonau: a Twelfth-Century Visionary (Philadelphia, PA, 1992), 14–16, 28–9, 40–1, 107–11 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Roth, Die Visionen, 53: ‘utrum solo spiritu assumpta sis in celum an etiam came’.

53 Ibid.: ‘Vidi in loco valde remoto sepulchrum quoddam multo lumine circuinfusum, et quasi speciem mulieris in eo, et circumstabat multitudo magna angelorum.’

54 T.S.R. Boase, The York Psalter (1962), pl.6 in colour.

55 Kurt Koster, ‘Elisabeth von Schonau: Werk und Wirkung im Spiegel der mittelalterlichen Handschriftlichen Überlieferung’, Archiv fur mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 3 (1951), 243-315, esp. 251-76. Also this vision had a considerable circulation as the only one of Elizabeth’s works in a manuscript, with eight not later than c.1200 (ibid., 285-93). From the first fifty years or so, the manuscripts show a considerable Cistercian circulation: see ibid., nos 12, 13, 16a, 17, 18, 24, 27, 32, 72, 73, 82, 83a, 93.

56 Boase, York Psalter, io-n;Gorman, William of Newburgh’s Explanatio, 21-4.

57 Ibid., 364, cf. 23, 56-7. One may note that he and Rupert differ in their whole concept of the Assumption.

58 Ibid., 133-4, cf. 85-6, 110,33711.10-13.

59 Ibid., 25-6, with refs to the text.

60 The Life of Christina of Markyate, ed. C.H. Talbot (Oxford, 1959), 134-44.

61 Sabina Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen: a Visionary Life (1989), 159, 172.

62 For a fine general discussion of these reliefs, see F. Saxl, English Sculptures of the Twelfth Century (1954), 32-8.

63 De itistitutione indusarum, in Aelredi Rievallensis Opera omnia, ed. A. Hoste and C.H. Talbot, CChr.CM 1 (Turnhout, 1971), 635-82. In this work Ailred encourages his sister to imagine, in her meditation, what it was like to be one of the people, one of the women especially, around Jesus.

64 Graef, Mary, 1:228. Valerie Flint, The commentaries of Honorius Augustodunensis on the Song of Songs’, in her Ideas in the Medieval West: Texts and their Contexts (1988), at XI, 203, is wisely more cautious.

65 PL 172, col. 505A.

66 Flint, ‘Commentaries’, 197.

67 Graef, Mary, t:222.

68 PL 40, esp. cols 1143-4, cf. Graef, Mary, 1:222-4. For Eadmer, Southern, R.W., St Anselm and His Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), 290–6 Google Scholar.

69 Sancti Bernardi Opera V, Sermones, ii, ed. J. Leclercq and H. Rochais (Rome, 1968), 230 H.6-15.

70 Epistola 174: PL 185, cols 332-6, esp. 336B.

71 R.I. Moore, The Origins of European Dissent (1977), 175-6; Lambert, Malcolm, The Cathars (Oxford, 1998), 19–23 Google Scholar.

72 PL 195, col. 17B-C. Translation of R.I. Moore, The Birth of Popular Heresy (1975), 93.

73 Clark, Elisabeth of Schonau, e.g. 23-5 (Hildegard of Bingen in here also), 63-7.

74 Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), 253 Google Scholar.

75 Adolf Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral (Norton, NY, 1959). 43-4.

76 Magistri Petri Lombardi Sententiae, 2 vols (Grottaferrata, 1971), esp. 1.8.5 (1:99. cf. 265); 2.1.6 (1:334-6); 2,19.1-3 (1:422-4); 2.31.4(1:506-8); 4.44 (on the Resurrection of the Dead).i, 2, 3, 5, 7 (all 2:516-21).