The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium

Texts and Images

Leslie Brubaker, Mary B. Cunningham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351891974
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

This volume, on the cult of the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) in Byzantium, focuses on textual and historical aspects of the subject, thus complementing previous work which has centred more on the cult of images of the Mother of God. The papers presented here, by an international team of scholars, consider the development and transformation of the cult from approximately the fourth through the twelfth centuries. The volume opens with discussion of the origins of the cult, and its Near Eastern manifestations, including the archaeological site of the Kathisma church in Palestine, which represents the earliest Marian shrine in the Holy Land, and Syriac poetic treatment of the Virgin. The principal focus, however, is on the 8th and 9th centuries in Byzantium, as a critical period when Christian attitudes toward the Virgin and her veneration were transformed. The book re-examines the relationship between icons, relics and the Virgin, asking whether increasing devotion to these holy objects or figures was related in any way. Some contributions consider the location of relics and later, icons, in Constantinople and other centres of Marian devotion; others explore gender issues, such as the significance of the Virgin's feminine qualities, and whether women and men identified with her equally as a holy figure. The aim of this volume is to build on recent work on the cult of the Virgin Mary in Byzantium and to explore areas that have not yet been studied. The rationale is critical and historical, using literary, artistic, and archaeological sources to evaluate her role in the development of the Byzantine understanding of the ways in which God interacts with creation by means of icons, relics, and the Theotokos.

Section III: The Mother of God in the Middle Byzantine Homiletic Tradition

10

John of Damascus on the Mother of God as a Link Between Humanity and God

Andrew Louth

Fifty years or so ago, in the wake of the proclamation of the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin by Pope Pius XII, my topic would have been at least tinged with controversy. Henry Chadwick ended his justly famed article, ‘Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian controversy’, a paper given within a month or so of the promulgation of the dogma in 1950 and published later in 1951, by observing:

The whole tendency of Monophysite piety was to minimize the significance of Christ’s soul … [T]he result is that Christ loses solidarity with us … No doubt there were many diverse factors which contributed to the rise in the position of the Virgin during the fifth and sixth centuries. But perhaps a fundamental factor is this need felt by popular Monophysite piety (and for the most part popular piety remains Monophysite to this day) for a figure in complete solidarity with us. The holy archimandrite Eutyches confesses to Flavian that for him Mary is ὁμοούσιος ἡμῖν (‘consubstantial with us’), ‘but until today I have not said that the body of our Lord and God is of one substance with us’; for the body of God cannot be a merely human body. Accordingly, there seems little need for surprise that such a story as the Assumption of the Virgin became current in Monophysite circles during this period.¹

The thrust of Chadwick’s remarks is that the Virgin Mary becomes the link between God and humankind because the Christ of popular piety has become too divine to effect such a link. St John Damascene, despite his fierce rejection of Monophysitism in many treatises, would be regarded from this perspective as embracing ‘Monophysite piety’ in virtue of his enthusiastic endorsement of the doctrine of the Assumption. There is an interesting question to be discussed about the relationship between learned theology and popular piety especially in the case of devotion to the Mother of God, but Chadwick’s remarks (made a long time ago, and certainly not to be held against his memory now) seem to short-circuit that discussion.

The case of Marian devotion is interesting because it raises in quite a stark way the question of the very different theological resources on which such devotion draws. It is evident that such piety has been nourished by two very different sources: on the one hand, reflection in apocryphal literature, especially the apocryphal gospels, on the infancy of Christ and, in the background, on the life of his mother, the blessed Virgin; and, on the other hand, reflection on the implications of conciliar definitions in matters Christological – the implications of these definitions, let it be noted, not usually the definitions themselves.

On the doctrinal side, Byzantine understanding of the Mother of God can be summed up in three epithets: Θεοτόκος, ἀειπαρθένος and παναγία (‘the one who gave birth to God’ or ‘Mother of God’, ‘ever-Virgin’ and ‘all-holy’). The authority for these epithets is to be found in the records of the early ecumenical councils.² The first of these, Θεοτόκος, was affirmed at the council of Ephesos (431), as a way of safeguarding Christological orthodoxy; the other two are affirmed, more or less in passing, by later councils: ἀειπαρθένος at Constantinople II (553), and παναγία by the use of the virtual equivalent ἄχραντος at Nicaea II (787). What is striking about this is that the dogmatic assertions about the blessed Virgin implied by these terms were intended to safeguard orthodox Christological dogma, not to provide the foundations for a Mariology with the purpose of supplementing an adequate Christology.

The apocryphal literature provides very different material: imagined, and indeed imaginative, reflection on the hidden years of Christ’s infancy and of the Virgin’s childhood – years that must have exercised Christian curiosity from the very beginning, as the profusion of infancy gospels illustrates.³ Very quickly quite an elaborate tradition developed, the best, and most influential, witness being the so-called Protevangelion of James, a late-second-century work.⁴ This provides an account of the life of the conception and birth of the Virgin, her upbringing in the temple, her engagement to Joseph, more details about the birth of Christ and his infancy. The most obvious evidence of its influence in Byzantium is liturgical: the feasts of the Mother of God, celebrating her Conception, Nativity and Presentation in the Temple, are all inspired by the Protevangelion. This text also had a powerful influence on the iconographic tradition, perhaps the fullest example of this being the cycle of mosaics illustrating the life of the Virgin in the narthex of the Church of the Chora in Constantinople.⁵ The Protevangelion is also a source for the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God, justifying it on empirical, rather than doctrinal, grounds.

I want to suggest that we see these two sources of reflection on the Virgin Mary as parallel to the two modes of Jewish exegesis, known as aggadah and halakah, the former providing narrative accounts that embroider the biblical text, initially the account of the Exodus, as well as providing stories about later figures in the Jewish tradition, such as rabbis, while the latter provides detailed elaboration and commentary on the moral teaching of the Torah.⁶ The sort of narrative elaboration found in the aggadah is paralleled in the apocryphal material, and indeed can already be found in some of the Gospel material, notably the infancy narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Christian equivalent of the ethical halakah I suggest we find, not in the collection of ecclesiastical canons – the most obvious parallel – but in the doctrinal definitions, ratified by the councils. I am deliberately suggesting a morphological difference between Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, or at least, Patristic (or maybe Eastern and Oriental Orthodox) Christianity, both finding significance in a narrative elaboration of their traditions, but finding defining significance in elaborated moral precept, on the Jewish side, and precise doctrinal definition, on the Christian side. The way in which, on this model, Christian doctrinal definition parallels Jewish moral precept indicates a fundamental divergence between the two developments of Second Temple Judaism,⁷ something I cannot pursue now, though I would observe that it is borne out in the way in which Rabbinic Judaism has developed differences over the interpretation of the Torah, that is in the realm of halakah, while Christian differences are, notoriously, over matters of dogma. Furthermore, as both aggadah and halakah are understood as developments, or unfoldings, of the fundamental revelation of the Torah, so the narratives of the Protevangelion and the related scriptural material, both canonical and apocryphal, as well as the doctrinal definitions – the Christian aggadah and Christian halakah, so to speak – draw out the Christian significance of the Scriptures: they are both ultimately exegetical methods. In the Christian case aggadah is often developed in a very particular way, peculiar to Christianity, and that is by means of what we have come to call typology – indeed I would go so far as to say that Christian aggadah is almost invariably developed by this means; typology provides the interpretative structure, as it were, of Christian narrative aggadah. Take, for example, the story of Mary as one of virgins weaving the scarlet and purple cloth for the veil of the temple at the time of the Annunciation: as the body of Jesus is woven in her womb – the flesh of Christ, which is according to the Epistle to the Hebrews the veil (Heb 10:20) – Mary weaves the scarlet and purple of the veil of the temple that will be rent when the King (purple) to whom she gives birth surrenders his life on the cross (scarlet).⁸ Or again, many aspects of Christian belief about the Virgin Mary, from the earliest times, relate the Virgin Mary to the Virgin Eve: Mary’s obedience redeems Eve’s sin; Mary gives birth to God, while Eve exclaims that she has begotten a man – Cain (Gen 4:1); and so on.⁹ This way of thinking about the imaginative narratives, so important for the development of reflection on the Virgin Mary, as well as devotion to her (note how important the Protevangelion has been for the development of liturgical celebration of the Mother of God, as we saw earlier), is clearly capable of considerable elaboration. If we are to think of it as aggadah, as I have suggested, then we are drawing attention to its hermeneutical dimension: there is something being interpreted in these stories, they are not just satisfying a desire for imaginative detail. Typology is one of the ways of providing this hermeneutical dimension. We can, furthermore, ask what is the overall meaning of, say, the Protevangelion. A provisional answer is not difficult to find: the Protevangelion is about purity: the purity of the Virgin, the liturgical significance of purity.¹⁰ Here, however, is not the place to pursue this, fascinat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Plates
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction – The Mother of God in Byzantium: Relics, Icons, Texts
• Section I – The Early Cult of the Virgin Mary: Pilgrimage, Miracles, Art and Texts
• Section II – Epithets and Typology for Mary, the Theotokos
• Section III – The Mother of God in the Middle Byzantine Homiletic Tradition
• Conclusion – Not the Theotokos Again?
• Index