VIRGIN
461
VIRGIN
while tlic Greek prayers translated by Zingerle in Iiis
" M;irion-Kosen aus Damaskus" are certainly of later
date than the fourth century; the tone, however, of
some of the most unquestioned of Ephraem's composi-
tions is still very remarkable. Thus in the hymns on the
Nativity (vi) we read: "Blessed be Mary, who with-
out vows and without prayer, in her virginity con-
ceived and brought forth the Lord of all the sons of her
companions, who have been or shall be chaste or
righteous, priests and kings. Who else lulled a son
in her bosom as Mary did? who ever dared to call her
son. Son of the Maker, Son of the Creator, Son of the
Most High?" Similarly in Hymns 11 and 12 of the
same series Ephraem represents Mary as soliloquizing
thus: "The babe that I carry carries ine, and He
hath lowered His wings and taken and placed me
between His pinions and mounted into the air, and a
promise has been given me that height and depth shall
be my Son's" etc. This last passage seems to suggest
_ a belief, like that of St. Epiphanius already referred
'to. that the holy remains of the Virgin Mother were
in some miraculous way translated from earth. The
fully-developed apocryphal narrative of the "Falling
asleep of Mary" probably belongs to a shghtly later
period, but it seems in this way to be anticipated in
the wTitings of Eastern Fathers of recognized author-
ity. How far the behef in the "Assumption", which
became generally prevalent in the course of a few
centuries, was independent of or influenced by the
apocrj'phal "Transitus Mariad", which is included by
Pope Gelasius in his list of condemned apocrypha, is a
difficult question. It seems likely that some germ of
popular tradition preceded the invention of the
extravagant details of the narrative itself.
In any case, the evidence of the SjTiac manuscripts proved beyond all question that in the East before the end of the sixth century, and probably very much earlier, devotion to the Blessed Virgin had assumed all those developments which are usuallj' associated with the later Middle Ages. The manuscript of the "Transitus Maria>" used by Mrs. Smith Lewis is described as probably of the later portion of the fifth century, and, at latest, of the early part of the sixth. In this we find mention of three annual feasts of the Blessed Virgin, one two days after the feast of the Nativity, another on the 15th day of lyar, corre- sponding more or less to May, and a third on the 1.3th (or 15th) day of Ab (roughly August),' which last probably is the origin of our present feast of the Assumption (see Studia Sinaitica, XI, .59-61). More- over, the same apocryphal relation contains an account of the Blessed Virgin's miracles, purporting to have been forwarded from the Christians of Rome, and closely resembling the " Maricnlegenden" of the Middle Ages. For example we read: "Often here in Rome she appears to the people who confess her in prayer, for she has appeared here on the sea when it was troubled and raised itself and was going to destroy the ship in which they were .sailing. .And the sailors called on the name of the Lady Man,- and said: 'O Lady Mary, Mother of God, have mercy on us', and straightway she rose upon them like the sun and delivered the ships, ninety-two of them, and rescued them from destruction, and none of them perished". And again we are told: "She appeared by day on the mountain where robbers had fallen upon people and sought to slay them. And these people cried out, saying: 'O Lady Mary, Mother of God, have mercy on us'. .'Xnd she appeared before them hke a flash of lightning, and blinded the eyes of the robbers and they were not seen by them" (ib., 49). Of course the wild extravagance of this apocrj'phal literature cannot be questioned. It is all pure invention and a comparison of the various texts of the "Transitus" shows that this tre.ili.sc in jiarticular was continually being modified and added to in its various transla- tions, 80 that we cannot be at all sure that the "Liber
qui appellalur transitus, id est Assumptio, Sanctis
Maria' apochryphus", condemned by Pope Gelasius
in 49-4, Wiis identical with the Syriac ver.sion just cited.
But it is highly probable that this same Syriac version
was then in existence, and apocrj^phal as the text may
be, it undoubtedly testifies to the state of mind of at
least the less instructed Christians of that period.
Neither is it hkely that feasts would be spoken of and
ascribed to the institutions of the Apostles themselves
if no .such commemoration existed in the locality in
which this fictitious narrative was so widely popular.
In point of fact Dr. Baumstark gives good rca.^ion for
believing that a feast described as f-i'Vt^V ^s ayiat
OeordKov Kal aeiKapdivov Ma/)tas was celehrateil at
Antioch as early as the year 370 (see"RdmischeQuar-
talschrift ", 1897, p. 55), while from the circumstance
that it was connected with the Epiphany we may
probably identify it with the first of the feasts referred
to in the Syriac Transitus.
There is also confirmatory evidence for such a feast to be found in the hj-nms of Balai, a SjTiac writer of the beginning of the fifth century; for not only does this writer use the most glowing language about Our Lady, but he speaks in such terms as these: "Praise to Thee Lord upon the memorial feast of Thy Mother" (see Zettersteen, "Beitriige", Poem 4, p. 14, and Poem 6, p. 15). Another clear testimony is that of St. Proclus, who died Patriarch of Constantinople, and who in 429 preached a sermon in that city, at which Nestorius was present, beginning with the words "The Virgin's festival (TrapOtvmri iravfiyvpi^) incites oiu' tongue to-day to herald her praise". In this, we may further note, he describes Mary as "handmaid and Mother, Virgin and heaven, the only bridge of God to men, the awful loom of the Incarnation, in which by some unspeakable way the garment of that union was woven, whereof the weaver is the Holy Ghost; and the spinner the overshadowing from on high; the wool the ancient fleece of Adam; the woof the undefiled flesh from the virgin; the weaver's .shuttle the immense grace of Him who brought it about; the artificer the Word gliding through the hearing" (P. G., LXV, 681). The authenticity of this dis- course seems to be admit ted by such scholars as Zockler and Loots (cf, Realencyclopiidie fiir prot. Theol., XII, 315; XIII, 742), and it illustrates in a remark- able degree how the controversies which bore fruit- in the canons of Ephesus and the title theolokos had led to a deeper understanding of the part of the Blessed Virgin in the work of Redemption.
Turning to another Eastern land, we find a very remarkable mommient of Marian devotion among the ostraca recently discovered in Eg>-pt and assigned by Mr. Crum (Coptic Ostraca, p. 3) to about A. D. 600. This fragment bears in C!reek the words: "Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among.st women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, because thou didst conceive Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer of oiu- souls". This oriental variant of the Ave Maria was apparently intended for liturgi- cal use, much as the earhest form of the Hail Mary in the West took the shape of an antiphon employed in the Mass and Office of the Bles.sed Virgin. Rela- tively late .as this fragment may seem, it is the more valuable because the direct mention of the Blessed Virgin in our earhest hturgical formute is of rare occurrence. None such, for example, is found in the prayer-book of Serapion, or in the liturgj- of the Apos- tolical Constitutions, or in the fragments of the Canon of the Mass preserved to us in the Ambrosian treatise "De Sacrament is". Bickell ("Ausgewiihlte Gedichte der syrischen Kirchenviiter", and "Ausgewiihlte Schriften", etc.) has edited and Ininslated certain Syriac hymns by Cyrillonas (c. 400) and especially by Rabulas of Edes.sa (d. 435), which speak of RIary in terms of warm devotion; but as in the case of St. Ephraem there is a certain clement of uncertainty
