Topic: Evidence for the Assumption of Mary
Question:
What patristic evidence do you have for Mary's Assumption?
Answer:
Here's a response I wrote for someone many moons ago, who was troubled about the supposed "lack of early evidence" for the Assumption:
As for the Assumption, ...
The strongest evidence for Mary's Assumption is, oddly enough, a complete lack of evidence. :-) ...That is to say, no early Christian ever claimed to have a bodily relic of Mary, and no city ever claimed to have Mary's remains. And this is in STARK contrast to the early veneration of the tombs of the Apostles and the other saints of the early Church. For example, everyone knew that the graves of Peter and Paul were at Rome. Likewise, the graves of John and Timothy were at Ephesus. The grave of Luke was in Greece, whereas the grave of Mark was in Alexandria, Egypt; later being transported to Venice. Likewise, the grave of James was at Jerusalem; the grave of Mary Magdalene was at Marseille. And, even the graves of the Old Testament saints were similarly venerated --such as the graves of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at Hebron; the grave of Rachel at Bethlehem (Matt 2:18), and the grave of David in Jerusalem itself (Acts 2:29). So, why did no early Christian ever speak about a grave of the Virgin Mary? ...Unless there never was one. :-)
Indeed, .... In the time of St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 107), we had the heresy of the Docetists, who claimed that Jesus did not have an earthly body. St. Ignatius, a disciple of Mary's caretaker, the Apostle John himself, speaks out against these Docetists in his Epistle to the Ephesians, citing Jesus' relationship to Mary to prove that the Lord had a true, human body.
Yet, if Mary's grave was available, it would have been used by both Ignatius and the Docetists to support their positions. Ignatius would have argued that Jesus' body was real because His mother's body is with us today; and the Docetists would have argued that Jesus' body was not real because He was not subject to death, whereas His mother's mortal body was. Yet, we have no mention of this. Why not? :-)
Truth be told, it seems that the earliest Christians chose to remain silent about Mary's Assumption so that it would not take away from the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. In this, we have to remember that Christianity was still a very new thing, and the main tenets of the Gospel had to be revealed to the world first, before devotion to Mary could properly develop. So, as with the Shroud of Turin, things like Mary's Assumption were kept as "family secrets." Not that they were withheld from anyone, but they were simply not widely advertized.
And, as with the Immaculate Conception, the earliest evidence that we have for the Assumption comes to us from the Eastern, non-Greek-speaking Church. Around 390 A.D., we have the writings of St. Epiphanius of Salamis. Now, St. Epiphanius was a native of Palestine (so he would have been familiar with all the Sacred Traditions of the original Jewish Church in Jerusalem). Yet, in around 390, St. Epiphanius moved to the Greek island of Cyprus, where he was elected to be the Bishop of Salamis. Thus, around this time, we have this Palestinian bishop writing to his Greek flock about the end of Mary's earthly life. And, speaking very diplomatically, he writes:
"Say she died a natural death. In that case she fell asleep in glory, and departed in purity and received the crown of her virginity. Or say she was slain with the sword according to Simeon's prophecy. There her glory is with the martyrs, and she through WHOM THE DIVINE LIGHT SHONE UPON THE WORLD IS IN THE PLACE OF BLISS ****WITH HER SACRED BODY****. Or say ***she left this world without dying**** for God can do what He wills. Then she was ***simply transferred to eternal glory****." (Haer. lxxix, 11).
So, St. Ephiphanis is speaking to his Greek, Cypriot flock --a flock which apparently had no eatablished Tradition about the Assumption. Yet, even so, Epiphanius mentions his own, Palestinian Tradition of the Assumption; and, while he does not force it upon the Greeks since, at this time, it was not a dogma and one did not have to accept it to be in the Church, he does present it to the Greek-speaking world. ...And he was most cetainly not the only one, since the mere fact that he mentions the Assumption in passing shows that it was currently known to be an established belief --an established theolegoumenon (theological opinion). ...Even if it was not yet widely known to the Greek-speaking Church.
Indeed, ... A similar case comes to us from St. John Damascene. Although he wrote in the 700's, he tells us a Tradition from his own, Jerusalem city-church about its bishop Juvenal, who represented the Church of Jerusalem at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. ...about 50 years after St. Epiphanius was writing. And, St. John tells us ...
"Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem at the Council of Chalcedon (451) made known to the Emperor Marcian and [his Empress] Pulcharia, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles and that her tomb, when opened upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to Heaven." (P.G.I, 96)
So, this shows us that ...as late as 451 ...the Tradition of the Assumption was not widely known within the Greek-speaking world. Indeed, the Emperor and Empresses (who would not have been the most devout of Christians anyway) didn't know about it, and had to be informed by the Bishop of Jerusalem. So, as I've said, it seems that the Assumption of Mary was understood by the Church in a relatively "private" way.
Yet, by the late 5th Century, all this changed. The feast of "The Dormition and Assumption of Mary" began to be widely celebrated in the East; and this feast was moved to the West in the 700's by one of the aforementioned Syrian Popes, St.Sergius I. And, at this point, the Assumption begins to be widely publicized for the first time. Thus, we begin to see the following quotes from the fathers:
The Pseudo-Augustine (c. 500):
"This venerable day has dawned, the day that surpasses all the festivals of the saints, this most exalted and solemn day on which the Blessed Virgin was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. On this day the queenly Virgin was exalted to the very throne of God the Father, and elevated to such a height that the angelic spirits are in admiration."
St. Gregory, Bishop of Tours in France (594 A.D.)
"The Lord . . . commanded the body of Mary be taken in a cloud into paradise; where now, rejoined to the soul, Mary dwells with the chosen ones."
St. Germaine I, Patriarch of Constantinople (c. 732 A.D. ...speaking of Mary)
"Thou art . . . the dwelling place of God . . . exempt from all dissolution into dust."
St. John Damascene [of Damascus] (c. 700)
"He who had been pleased to become Incarnate (of) her . . . was pleased . . .to honor her immaculate and undefiled body with incorruption . . . prior to the common and universal resurrection."
And, so, the Assumption continued to be celibrated by the Church's Liturgy until modern times when, in 1950, it was finally declared to be a dogma of Catholic Christianity.
Mark Bonocore
Catholic Apologist
January 16, 2002