Marian Studies Volume 60Telling Mary's Story: The "Life of Mary" Article 5 Through the Ages 2009 The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past: From Ancient Marian Apocrypha to the Medieval Vitae Virginis Stephen J. Shoemaker Follow this and additional works at:https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies Part of theReligion Commons Recommended Citation Shoemaker, Stephen J. (2009) "The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past: From Ancient Marian Apocrypha to the Medieval Vitae Virginis," Marian Studies: Vol. 60, Article 5. Available at:https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol60/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Marian Library Publications at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Marian Studies by an authorized editor of eCommons. For more information, please [email protected], [email protected]. Shoemaker: The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past THE Vm.GIN MAR.v's HIDDEN PAST From Ancient Marian Apocrypha to the Medieval Vitae Virginis Stephen J Shoemaker, PhD* In light of the enormous significance that the Virgin Mary would come to assume in later Christian piety, the rather leisurely pace with which the early Christians developed mem ories of her life is perhaps somewhat surprising. As is well known, the canonical gospels offer only very meager details of Mary's life, and despite the considerable narrative and theo logical importance of her infrequent appearances, these bio graphies of Jesus reveal frustratingly little about his mother.1 Paul, for his part, seems to know very little about the mother of the Lord, and other writers of the first and early second cen turies seem similarly unconcerned with the events of her life. Although Justin would fust explore the theme of Mary as the New Eve around the middle of the second century, only with the near simultaneous appearance of the so-called Protevan gelium ofj ames do we find a significant break in the silence surrounding the life of Christ's mother. 2 This early Christian •stephen ]. Shoemaker is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon. He teaches courses on the Christian tradition. His primary inter ests are ancient and early medieval Christian traditions, especially early Byzantine and Near Eastern Christianity. His research focuses on early devotion to the Virgin Mary, Christian apocryphal literature, and the relations between Near Eastern Christianity and formative Islam. • See, e.g., Raymond E. Brown, et al.,Mary in the New Testament:A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). 2 See, e.g., Hilda C. Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2 vols., vol. 1, From the Beginnings to tbe Eve of the Reformation (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 32-8. LX (2009) MARIAN STUDIES 1-30 Published by eCommons, 2009 1 Marian Studies, Vol. 60 [2009], Art. 5 2 The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past apocryphon, it would seem, initiated the process of writing the Virgin's biography, beginning with the events of her childhood and her own miraculous conception. In the centuries that fol lowed, other apocrypha would take up different moments from her life, including especially its dramatic conclusion, and collectively these narratives formed the basic building blocks for the medieval Lives of the Virgin. Beginning flrst with the seventh-century Life of the Virgin ascribed to Maximus the Confessor, Mary's medieval biogra phers sought to weave the strands of these earlier traditions into a comprehensive account of her life. This "Maximu s" Life of the Virgin, in fact, established the basic pattern for many other Lives that would follow, and in transmitting the apoc ryphal traditions of the early church to the middle ages, it exercised considerable influence on subsequent Byzantine narratives of Mary's life.Whoever its author may have been, this late ancient biography of the Virgin, which survives only in Georgian, is a long-overlooked watershed in the history of Mar ian literature, and, as such, it deserves more considered study within the history of Marian literature. Turning fust, however, to the oldest Marian biography, the Protevangelium ofj ames, one immediately encounters some remnants of an older generic confusion. Although modern scholarship has long classilled this "proto-gospel" among the Infancy Gospels, as if it were primarily concerned with the story of the young boy Jesus, this designation is more than a lit tle misleading. Originally titled reveotc; Mapiac;, or the Birth ofM ary,3 this apocryphon not only is not a "gospel," as has long been recognized, but also its primary subject is the conception and childhood of the Blessed Virgin, a point partially obscured by its rather odd placement alongside legends of the boy Jesus. Indeed, one wonders how this early biography of the Virgin came to be classilled as an Infancy Gospel in the flrst place. Quite possibly early modern collectors of apocrypha found the Protevangelium's intense early interest in the Virgin so incon gruous with their views of Mary's place in the ancient church 3 Emile de Strycker, La forme Ia plus andenne du Protevangile de jacques, Sub sidia Hagiographica 33 (Bruxelles: Societe des Bollandistes, 1961), 208-16. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol60/iss1/5 2 Shoemaker: The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past 3 that they did not know what else to make of it. They seem to have assumed that such extended focus on the life of the Vir gin already during the second century could only have been intended to underscore her son's marvelous infancy, rather than aiming to draw any attention to Mary herself as an emer gent focus of Christian piety. By consequence, the significance of this primitive biography of the young Virgin, and more importantly what it reveals about her early emergence as a focus of special theological interest and devotion, can occa sionally be obscured by its disguise as an Infancy Gospel. From the Protevangelium we learn that already by the mid second century some proto-orthodox Christians had come to the belief that not only had the conception and birth of Mary's son been miraculous, but so too was her own. 4 Like her son, Mary's conception occurred spontaneously in her mother's womb, in the absence of any sexual relations: according to this biography, Mary's mother Anne conceived miraculously at a time when Joachim, her father, had been fasting in the wilder ness for forty days and nights.5 Moreover, the Protevangelium describes Mary's upbringing as a consecrated virgin in the Jerusalem temple, followed by her chaste marriage to the much older Joseph at the onset of menstruation. Likewise, this ancient Christian text reveals early belief in Mary's virginity in partu, showing pronounced interest in her physical purity already by this time. Indeed, just over a century after her death, we fmd here that the canvas of Mary's life had begun to be embroidered with details reaching beyond mere Christological themes to disclose an emergent theological interest in the fig ure of Mary herself. And while it certainly would be premature to speak of any sort of"cult" of the Virgin at this stage, the Pro tevangelium ofj ames nevertheless appears to bear witness at least to an incipient devotion to the mother of Christ. 4 Willielm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, trans. R. MeL. Wilson, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991-2), 1 :4234; Ronald E Hock, The Infancy Gospels ofj ames and Thomas: With Introduction, Notes, and Original Text Featuring the New Scholars Version Translation, Scholars Bible (Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polebridge Press, 1995), 11-12. See also George T. Zervos, "Dating the Pro tevangelium of]a mes: The Justine Martyr Connection," SBL Seminar Papers 33 (1994): 415-34. 5 de Strycker, La forme Ia plus ancienne, 64-81; Hock, The Infancy Gospels, 32-9. Published by eCommons, 2009 3 Marian Studies, Vol. 60 [2009], Art. 5 4 The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past The Protevangelium concludes with Herod's slaughter of the innocents, leaving the remainder of Mary's adult life much of a mystery. A few tantalizing glimpses of the young mother are afforded by the Infancy Gospel ofThomas,or the IIatotK& -.ou Kup(ou, which describes the childhood acts of the young Jesus between the ages of five and twelve. Although the date of this apocryphon is somewhat less certain, most scholars are agreed that it probably belongs to the latter part of the second century.6 In the frrst half of the text Joseph appears alone as Jesus' father, but eventually the Virgin emerges in the second half, identified on several occasions as the child's mother. One of these episodes (19) merely expands on Luke's account of the boy Jesus' visit to the Jerusalem temple (Luke 2:42-51), adding here the praises of the scribes and Pharisees for Mary, whom they hail as more blessed than all other women, while in another instance (14) Joseph orders Mary to keep Jesus locked up in their house "because those who annoy him end up dead."7 In an earlier scene, however, Mary wit~esses one of her son's miracles,as he fetches water with his cloak to replace a broken pitcher: so amazed is she that "she kept to herself the mysteries that she had seen him do," implying here perhaps her knowledge of many other prodigies as well.8 Nevertheless, the Virgin is otherwise kept offstage in this account of Jesus' childhood, and with only these few exceptions, Mary's role in raising her young son remains largely unvoiced by the early Christian tradition. In the third and fourth centuries, Mary's biography contin ued to expand, moving from the earlier stages of her life as remembered in these two apocrypha to focus instead on the events of her departure from this world, the Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin. Mary's activities during the inter vening period, however, from her son's teaching in theTemple through the founding of the Church, remained largely un explored for several centuries still to come. The ancient traditions 6 Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 1:442; Hock, The Infancy Gospels, 91·2, 104. 7 Hock, The Infancy Gospels, 132-3, 140-3. a Ibid., 126-9. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol60/iss1/5 4 Shoemaker: The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past 5 of the Virgin's Dormition open only a few days before Mary's removal from the world, as an angel appears to announce her impending quietus. The story then unfolds with great diversity in the earliest accounts, although two main literary types quickly came to predominate-the so-called "Palm of the Tree of Life" narratives, named for their prominent inclusion of a palm branch from this primeval tree, and the "Bethlehem" tra ditions, which are distinguished by their location of certain key events from the Virgin's Dormition in Bethlehem.9 Only a very few events are related by nearly all of the early narratives, and these include the Virgin's death in Jerusalem, the presence of at least some of the apostles, Christ's reception of his mother's soul, and Mary's transfer to Paradise in body and/or soul. The imagined hostility of the Jews is also a persistent theme, as the Jewish leaders seek to disrupt the Virgin's funeral and to dishonor or even destroy this body that gave birth to "the deceiver." These latter elements in particular laid important foundations for an often close association between Marian piety and anti-Judaism in the middle ages.10 As for their origins, the earliest Dormition narratives seem to have first emerged within heterodox Christian communities, although they were increasingly adopted by"orthodox" Christians over the course of the ftfth and sixth centuries, eventually becoming a central component of the Virgin's canonical biography. The oldest Dormition narrative would appear to be an apoc ryphon known as the Obsequies of the Virgin, which survives in several Syriac fragments copied during the late ftfth and sixth centuries. The full extent of this earliest narrative, how ever, survives only in an Ethiopic translation bearing the title Liber Requiei Mariae, or the Book of Mary's Repose.11 Early versions of this apocryphon circulated as widely as Georgia 9 See the discussion of these two literary traditions and their main components in Stephen ]. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 32·57. 10 Stephen}.Shoemaker,"'Let Us Go and Burn Her Body':The Image ofthe}ews in the Early Dorrnition Traditions," Church History 68, no.4 (1999): 775-823. 11 See the description of these and other witnesses in Shoemaker, Ancient Tradi tions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition, 32-7. Published by eCommons, 2009 5 Marian Studies, Vol. 60 [2009], Art. 5 6 The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past and Ireland, and comparison of these late ancient and early medieval Dormition narratives with the complete Ethiopic text confirms the general reliability of this translation as a faith ful witness to the earliest extant traditions of the VIrgin's Dor mition.12This ancient Christian apocryphon, dating to the third century in all likelihood, is fairly rife with heterodoxies.13 For example, the Liber Requiei expresses an Angel Christology, according to which Mary's son was an earthly manifestation of "the Great Cherub of Light:'14 Moreover, the Liber Requiei repeatedly emphasizes the soteriological necessity of esoteric knowledge and refers on several occasions to a common "gnos tic" cosmological myth that describes the soul's imprisonment by the Demiurge and its need to ascend past his minions after death in order to return to the Pleroma.15 The Christ-Angel entrusts his mother with a secret book containing the myster ies of heaven and earth, which he revealed at the tender age of five, and she in tum delivers the book to the apostles just before her death.16 Likewise Mary shares with the apostles a secret prayer that her son had taught her: only by speaking these words just before death is it possible for the soul to escape past the cre ator of the world and return to the spiritual realm of the Father.17 12 Ibid., 153-68; 415-18. 13 Ibid., 42-6,253-6,278-9, 284-6; Stephen]. Shoemaker, "Death and the Maiden:The Early History of the Dormition andAssumptionApocrypha," St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 50 (2006): 59-97. 14 See esp. Liber Requiei 1-3, 52 (Victor Arras, De transitu Mariae apocrypha aethiopice, 2 vols., CSCO 342-3, 351-2 [Louvain: Secretariat du Corpus SCO, 1973], 1: 1-3, 31 [Eth] and 1-2, 21 [Lat]); cf. Antoine Wenger, L~ssomption de la T. S. Vi~e dans la tradition byzantine du VIe au Xe siecle. etudes et documents, Archives de !'Orient chretien, 5 (Paris: Institut fran-.ais d'etudes byzantines, 1955), 210.15, 226-9; trans. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition, 290.1, 320, 351-6, 362-4. See also Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition, 215-20,239-41. 15 E.g.,Liber Requiei 13-17 (Arras, De transitu, 1:7-9 [Eth] and 5-6 [Lat]);Wenger, L~ssomption, 214-19; trans. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition, 298-300, 356-8. 16 E.g.,Liber Requiei 44 (Arras, De transitu, 1:27 [Eth] and 17-18 [Lat]);Wenger, L~ssomption, 220.1; trans. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition, 316,360. 17 E.g.,Liber Requiei 15 (Arras, De transitu, 1 :8 (Eth) and 5 (Lat)); trans. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition, 299. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol60/iss1/5 6 Shoemaker: The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past 7 These heterodox elements present important evidence for the relatively early formation of this narrative, almost certainly sometime before the fourth century, as well as bearing witness more generally to the remarkable confessional diversity of ancient Christianity. The peculiar theological backdrop against which this narrative of Mary's miraculous departure from the world unfolds suggests that her earliest veneration may have emerged within a theologically heterodox milieu that under stood Christ as a Great Angel and looked to esoteric knowledge for salvation from the Demiurge at death. The more" orthodox" Dormition narratives of the early middle ages frequently express their discomfort with these heterodoxies of the earlier tradition, and their authors explain that in order to appropri ate these traditions it was necessary to purge the ancient nar ratives of their doctrinal errors, an editorial cleansing that is quite apparent in the earliest transmission of these legends during the sixth and seventh centuries.1s There is, however, in the Liber Requiei a rather intriguing scene from the life of the Virgin that occurs outside of the sequence of her Dormition. The story concerns the Holy Fam ily's flight into Egypt, and it relates an episode that is perhaps more familiar from its expurgated form as preserved in the Latin Gospel of Ps.-Matthew.19 Near the opening of the Liber Requiei, the Christ-Angel recalls this story for his mother in order to remind her of the full nature of his power. 5) And he [the Christ-Angel] said, 'My mother, you did not understand my power. I first revealed it to you at the spring, where I led Joseph. He was crying, the child who is glorified because he is greater than every thing, and Joseph was angry with you, saying, "Give your breast to your child."A t once you gave it to him, as you went forth to the Mount of Olives, 18 Ps.-Melito, Transitus Mariae, prologue, in Bin neuer "Transitus Mariae" des Pseudo-Me/ito, ed. Monika Haibach-Reinisch (Rome: PontificiaAcademia Mariana Inter nationalis, 1962), 64-5; John of Thessalonica, Dorm. BMV A 1, in Homelies mariales byzantines, ed. and trans. Martin}ugie, 2 vols. (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1922-1926), 2:376-7 (PO 19.3);Andrew of Crete, Orat.13 (PG 97.1072B). 19 A story similar to the one told in 5-9 is found in the Gospel ofP s.-Mattbew, 20-1 Oan Gijsel and Rita Beyers, eds., Libri de nativitate mariae, 2 vols., Corpus Chris tianorum, Series Apocryphorum, 9-10 [Turnhout: Brepols, 1997]), 1:458-70. Published by eCommons, 2009 7 Marian Studies, Vol. 60 [2009], Art. 5 8 The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past fleeing from Herod. And when you came to some trees you said to Joseph, "My lord, we are hungry, and what do we have to eat in this desert place?" Then he rebuked you, saying, "What can I do for you? Is it not enough for you that I became a stranger to my family on your account; why didn't you guard your virginity, so that you would [not] be found in this; and not only you, but I and my children too; now I live here with you, and I do not even know what will happen to my seven children." 6) I say this to you Mary: know who I am and what power is upon me. And then he said to you "There is no fruit that you could eat in the trees. This date-palm is tall, and I cannot climb it. I say to you that there is no one at all who has climbed, and there is nothing that a person will flnd in this desert. I have been afflicted from all sides because of you, because I have left my country. And I am afflicted because I did not know the child that you have; I only know that he is not from me. But I have thought in my heart, perhaps I had intercourse with you while drunk, and that I am even worse because I had determined to protect [you]. And behold, now it has been made known that I was not negligent, because there were [only] flve months when I received you into [my] custody. And behold, this child is more than flve months; for you embraced him with your hand."20 Perhaps understandably, this version of the story does not survive in later Marian biographies, no doubt on account of its highly discordant portrayal of the young Jesus' family life. Indeed, one wonders how the original author(s) of this text would have understood Matthew 1.18-25, which relates the angel's visit to Joseph in a dream and Joseph's persuasion that Mary's child had been conceived miraculously by the Holy Spirit. Perhaps one must assume that Matthew's gospel may not have been an authoritative text within the early Christian com munity that originally produced this peculiar account of the flight to Egypt. In any case, such irreverent portrayal of Mary and Joseph stands sharply at odds with their representation in other early Christian sources, and this dissonance is yet another sign of the Liber Requiei's relative antiquity. Later redactors took decisive steps to soften the episode's impact. 20 Liber Requiei 5-6 (Arras, De transitu, 1:2-4 [Eth] and 2-3 [I..at]); Michel van Esbroeck, "Apocryphes georgiens de Ia Dormition," Analecta Bollandiana 92 (1973): 55-75,69-70 (Geor) and 74 (I..at); English trans., Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition, 291-3. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol60/iss1/5 8 Shoemaker: The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past The Virgin Mary's Hidden Past 9 The Georgian fragments of the Liber Requiei, for instance, eliminate Joseph's suspicions of himself and his correspond ing admission of drunkenness, while in the seventh-century Gospel of Ps.-Matthew, which preserves the best known ver sion of this story,Joseph is barely allowed to speak at all: when Mary expresses hunger, he calmly notes that water seems to be their more urgent need, and with this minor marital disagree ment, harmony is restored to the Holy Family. The other major literary tradition of the Virgin's Dormition, the Bethlehem tradition, is ftrst evidenced by the so-called "Six Books" apocryphon, a widely circulated text that is frrst extant in several Syriac manuscripts from the ftfth and sixth cen turies. 21 This earliest exemplar of these Bethlehem narratives most likely dates to the middle of the fourth century, if not per haps even earlier, and it would appear to have some sort of a connection with the "Kollyridians;' whom Epiphanius assails (somewhat unfairly it would seem) for their rather precocious veneration of the Virgin at this time. 22 Although it was almost certainly composed in Greek, the Six Books apocryphon sur vives only in Syriac, Ethiopic, and Arabic versions in an as yet unknown number of manuscripts. The Greek original seems to have been lost due to its displacement by the much shorter Transitus Mariae ascribed to John the Theologian, a resume of the Six Books that was most likely produced in the late ftfth or early sixth-century, presumably with an eye toward greater liturgical efficiency. 23 This early precis of the Bethlehem 21 Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Donnition, 46-51. 22 Stephen]. Shoemaker, "Epiphanius of Salamis, the Kollyridians, and the Early Dor mition Narratives: The Cult of the Virgin in the Later Fourth Century;'J ournal ofE arly Christian Studies 16 (2008): 369-99. Concerning the date, see also Stephen]. Shoe maker, "A Peculiar Version of the Inventio crucis in the Early Syriac Dormition Tradi tions," Studia Patristica 41 (2006): 75-81, which updates and corrects Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions oft he Virgin Mary's Donnition, 286-7. See also Richard Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead: Studies on Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, Supplements to Novum Testamentum, 93 (Lei den: Brill, 1998), 358-60; Michel van Esbroeck, "Some Ear lier Features in the Life of the Vrrgin;' Marianum 63 (200 1): 297-308. 23 Michel van Esbroeck, "Les textes litteraires sur l'assomption avant le Xe siecle," in Les actes apocryphes des ap6tres,ed.Franc;ois Bovon (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), 265-85, 269; Simon C. Mimouni, Donnition et Assomption de Marie: Histoire des traditions anciennes, Theologie Historique, 98 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1995), 124; Published by eCommons, 2009 9