Mary's Bodily Assumption into Heaven

Section 4: Mary’s Bodily Assumption into Heaven

The doctrine of our Lady’s bodily Assumption was brought prominently forward by a petition submitted to the Vatican Council, in 1870, by 204 Bishops, asking that this pious belief be defined as an article of faith.¹ The Assumption, consequently, is not yet a dogma, though Suarez says that “whoever would impugn this pious and religious belief would be held guilty of extreme rashness.”² To-day, when so many ancient documents are recognized as spurious, this judgment is, perhaps, too severe.

1. The Death of Our Lady

History tells us nothing about the time when our Lady died or the circumstances of her death. Nor do we know where she was buried. Scripture is silent on all these points and the oldest extant accounts are based entirely on apocryphal sources. Though some theologians have denied the reality of Our Lady’s death,³ it has been a matter of universal belief from primitive times.

a) As we have already observed, there is no historical argument to prove the fact. In the fourth century, St. Epiphanius, after a careful investigation of the available evidence, confessed himself unable to arrive at a definite conclusion.⁴ Nor have we any certain knowledge regarding the date of our Lady’s demise or the place of her burial. Pseudo-Dionysius’ account⁵ of a miraculous meeting of the Apostles at her deathbed is merely a pious legend, which can claim no greater credence than the stories circulated at an early date regarding the death and alleged resurrection of the Master’s favorite disciple, Saint John.⁶ The recent controversy between Fonck and Nirschl as to whether the Blessed Virgin died at Ephesus or Jerusalem, has led to no positive results, and we must still acknowledge with Billuart that both opinions are equally probable.⁷ The belief that our Lady died rests on the law of the universality of death, from which not even the Godman Himself was exempt.⁸

b) Since the sixth century the death of the Blessed Virgin is commemorated in the liturgies on August 15th.

The Sacramentary of Pope Gregory I (540–604) contains this passage: “To-day’s festival is venerable to us, O Lord, because on this day the blessed Mother of God suffered temporal death, but it was not possible that she who gave birth to our incarnate Lord, Thy Son, should be subjugated by death.”⁹ A similar prayer is found in all the Roman missals published since the time of Pius V.

It goes without saying that the death of Our Lady is not to be regarded as a penalty for wrong-doing, nor yet as an effect of original sin. The immaculately conceived Mother of God was exempt from concupiscence¹⁰ and the debitum mortis. Pope Pius V, in 1567, condemned the following proposition of Baius: “No one except Christ is without original sin; consequently the Blessed Virgin died because of sin contracted through Adam.”¹¹ It was meet and proper that the Mother of Christ should be made like unto her Divine Son. This conformity did not, however, require that she should die a martyr’s death. Christ alone had to die for the sins of the world. Mary’s was a spiritual martyrdom at the foot of the Cross, and she is therefore rightly called “Queen of Martyrs.”¹² It is the common belief of Christians that she died a natural and painless death.¹³

2. The Dogmatic Data for the Assumption

The bodily resurrection and assumption of our Lady can no more be established by historic proofs than her death and burial. There is no historical tradition on the subject of sufficient authenticity to furnish the basis for a dogmatic argument. The first five centuries present an empty void, and no historic bridge connects us with the eye-witnesses of the event. The apocrypha can furnish no solid argument.

Among the apocryphal sources may be reckoned all the accounts of the bodily Assumption of Our Lady attributed to St. Athanasius, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, and St. John of Damascus. To make believe that he was a disciple of the Apostles, the Pseudo-Areopagite¹⁴ tells of a journey which he claims to have made “to see the body which engendered life and bore God”¹⁵ and in the course of which he met St. James, “the brother of God,”¹⁶ and “Peter, the most eminent and most ancient head of theologians.”

St. John of Damascus has left us three genuine homilies on the bodily Assumption of Mary, to which we shall return further down. “A later hand has interpolated in the second homily (c. 18) the often-quoted but very enigmatical account of the dealings of the Empress Pulcheria with Juvenal, patriarch of Jerusalem, in reference to the sepulchre of Mary.”¹⁷ The fact that her tomb was found empty and that no relics remained of her body, gives color to the belief that she was assumed bodily into Heaven; but does not afford a dogmatic basis. It would be useless, therefore, to try to decide the question of purely historic evidence.

It may be objected: If the Assumption of Our Lady cannot be demonstrated to be an historic fact, how can theologians speak of it as “certain” and express the hope that it will eventually be raised to the rank of a dogma? The answer is that an insufficiently attested fact may be as surely proved by the dogmatic as by the historical method. Thus, for instance, there is no historic evidence by which we could establish the Immaculate Conception or the sinlessness of our Lady. Similarly, belief in the Assumption did not originate entirely in historic documents, but mainly in dogmatic considerations connected with our Lady’s prerogatives as Deipara and confirmed by an Apostolic Tradition, which at first lay hidden, but came to the surface about the sixth century and continued its course to the present time, with all the marks of a revealed tradition.¹⁸

a) We come to the theological arguments in favor of the Assumption of our Lady.

Chief among these is the doctrine of the incorruptibility of her body.

We can scarcely assume that the virginal body which conceived and gave birth to the Godman became a prey to corruption. Not that physical decay involves a moral taint; but Christian piety has always preferred to hold, with Pseudo-Jerome, that the body of God’s holy Mother escaped the horrors of the grave.¹⁹ Incorruptibility is distinctly emphasized as an attribute of Divine Motherhood in the liturgy of Pope Gregory the Great.²⁰ Very properly, therefore, is the passage: “Thou wilt not give thy holy one to see corruption” (Ps. XV, 10) applied to Mary, because, as Deipara, she was of one flesh with her Divine Son (Caro Iesu, caro Mariae).

The incorruptibility of our Lady’s sacred body may also be inferred from her perpetual virginity. There is an inseparable causal connection between incorruptio virginalis and incorruptio corporalis—the one is the fruitage of the other. This is emphasized in the liturgical prayers of the Church and the writings of the later Fathers. Thus we read in the Mozarabic liturgy, which originated in Spain after the fifth century: “Ingenerate Father on high, who hast conferred such great prerogatives upon the glorious Mary, … as she merited to be assumed to-day into the choirs of the angels and virgins, or to be gladdened by the gift of incorrupt flesh, so do Thou extirpate carnal desires in us and admit us to that same place … O ineffable chastity, O immaculate virginity, which deserved to be admitted to the abode of the blessed in this novel and unspeakable manner!”²¹ St. Andrew of Crete (died about 720) expresses himself thus in a homily for the festival of the Assumption: “As the womb [of Mary] was in no wise corrupted by parturition, so her flesh did not perish after death.”²² As the virginal body of Our Divine Saviour was preserved from decay in the grave, so the body of His immaculate Mother must have escaped corruption, because, by virtue of a special privilege, it was not a corpus peccati, and consequently not a corpus mortis.

b) From the incorruptibility of our Lady’s body to its early resurrection, i.e., her bodily Assumption into Heaven, is but one remove. It is impossible to assume that Christ should wait for the day when all men will rise from the dead, to re-unite the virginal body of His Mother with her pure soul.

St. Bernard insists that if the body of our Lady had not been assumed into Heaven, God would not have concealed its resting-place. But this is hardly a cogent argument. God might have chosen to conceal our Lady’s tomb for the same reason that led Him to hide the grave of Moses,²³ viz.: to prevent idolatrous practices. Again, He might have removed the sacred corpse to some extra-mundane place, for instance, that where the living bodies of Enoch and Elias await the end of the world. The Benedictine monk Usuard (about A.D. 860) seems to have favored the last-mentioned theory.²⁴

But there is one strictly dogmatic consideration which sweeps away all doubt in the corporeal assumption of our Lady. As the Mother of God Mary was conceived without original taint, free from concupiscence, and absolutely exempt from personal sin; therefore she could not possibly be subject to the dominion of death up to the time of the general resurrection. We have shown on a previous page that her exemption from original sin necessarily involves exemption from the penalties of sin. Consequently, she was also exempt from death. If nevertheless, to conform herself more closely to her Divine Son, she paid tribute to death, her dignity as Deipara and Ever-Virgin demanded at least this much that she should forthwith—the legend has it on the third day—be raised from the dead and assumed with body and soul into Heaven. The Scotistic syllogism “Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit” would seem to apply to the doctrine of the Assumption with precisely the same force with which it bears on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople (died 733), evidently felt this when he exclaimed: “Let death recede from thee, O Mother of God, who hast brought life to mortal men! Let the grave recede from thee, because thou hast become a divine foundation of unspeakable grandeur! Away with the dust; for thou art a new structure, being the mistress of those who have become spoilt in the mire of clay! … Thou hast obtained the honorary title of Mother of God … Therefore it was becoming that thy body, which had received into itself the Life, should not be enshrouded in deathly corruption.”²⁵

c) These more or less aprioristic reasons find a strong support in Scripture. The bishops who, at the time of the Vatican Council, petitioned the Holy See to dogmatize the doctrine of the Assumption, appealed mainly to the traditional interpretation of the Protevangelium.²⁶

They argued as follows: “According to the Apostolic teaching [recorded in Rom. V, 8, I Cor. XV, 24, 26, 54, 57, Heb. II, 14, 15 and other texts], when Jesus triumphed over the Ancient Serpent (Satan), He gained a threefold victory over sin and its effects, i.e., concupiscence and death. Since the Mother of God is associated in a singular manner in this triumph with her Son, (Gen. III, 15), which is also the unanimous opinion of the Fathers: we do not doubt that in the aforementioned [Scriptural] passage this same Blessed Virgin is presignified as illustrious by that threefold victory: over sin by her immaculate conception, over concupiscence by her virginal motherhood, and in like manner over hostile death by a triumphant resurrection similar to that of her Son.”²⁷ In matter of fact the “enmity” which God placed between Mary and the serpent was directed not only against sin but likewise against the fruits of sin, i.e., concupiscence and physical death.²⁸ Death would have actually triumphed over the “woman” (Mary) had she been subject to decay and were her resurrection postponed to the Last Judgment. Properly interpreted, therefore, the Protevangelium contains a prediction, not only of the Immaculate Conception of our Lady, but likewise—though not so clearly—of her bodily assumption into Heaven. Side by side with her Divine Son Mary triumphs over death.

To this may be added another consideration. It is the teaching of Fathers and theologians that the Ark of the Covenant, which was made of pure gold and overshadowed by a cloud, was preeminently a type of the Blessed Virgin Mary.²⁹ Now the Psalmist says: “Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place: thou and the ark, which thou hast sanctified.”³⁰ And St. John in the Apocalypse: “The temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple… . And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun.”³¹

d) The most reliable source of Catholic belief in the bodily assumption of Mary is ecclesiastical tradition, which became crystallized as early as the sixth century and, despite the elimination of apocryphal legends, persisted up to the present time—a proof that the belief of the faithful did not originate in, nor owe its diffusion to, the apocrypha. The tradition that Our Lady was assumed bodily into Heaven emerged into broad daylight in the sixth century and manifested itself practically in the liturgical celebration of the festival of her Assumption, and theoretically in the homiletic teaching of the Fathers in connection with this festival.

(α) Under different names (dormitio, depositio, pausatio, assumptio B. Mariae Virginis, κοίμησις τῆς θεοτόκου Μαρίας) this feast from the very beginning had for its object the assumption of our Lady with soul and body into Heaven. In Italy and Spain it was celebrated August 15, in Gaul, January 18.³² In the East the pious Emperor Mauritius (582–602) introduced the celebration of the feast of the κοίμησις (falling asleep) of the Blessed Virgin and commanded it to be celebrated on the fifteenth of August in all those places of the Byzantine Empire where it was not yet observed.³³ This accounts for the fact that the schismatic Greek Church has faithfully retained the custom of solemnizing the festival of the Assumption. At a council held in Jerusalem, A.D. 1672, the schismatics confessed: “Though the immaculate body of Mary was locked in the tomb, yet, like Christ, she was assumed and migrated to Heaven on the third day.”³⁴ The Armenians declared in their symbol of union (A.D. 1342): “The Church of the Armenians believes and holds that the holy Mother of God was by the power of Christ assumed with her body into Heaven.”³⁵

True, the idea underlying the celebration of the festival of the Assumption was now and then temporarily obscured, as may be seen from the Martyrology of Usuard, quoted above.³⁶ But these temporary obscurations were not nearly so frequent nor so grave as those which retarded the development of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Then, too, the doubts which arose with regard to the Assumption were occasioned, not by apocryphal stories, but rather by the ecclesiastical condemnation of certain apocryphal books, as, for example, the rejection by the Decretum Gelasianum of the Liber de Transitu Beatae Mariae Virginis, falsely attributed to St. Melito of Sardes.³⁷ But all doubts were ultimately dispelled.

(β) Synchronously with the introduction of the feast of the Assumption the later Fathers testified in favor of the doctrine upon which it was based. The earliest testimony we know of in the Western Church is this utterance of St. Gregory of Tours (†596): “The Lord commanded the holy body [of Mary after her death] to be borne on a cloud to Paradise, where, reunited to its soul, and exulting with the Elect, it enjoys the never-ending bliss of eternity.”³⁸ The Patriarch Modestus, who preceded St. Sophronius as Bishop of Jerusalem (†634), left a panegyric on the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin under the title: Ἐγκώμιον εἰς τὴν κοίμησιν τῆς ὑπεραγίας δεσποίνης ἡμῶν θεοτόκου καὶ ἀειπαρθένου Μαρίας.³⁹

Our most important witnesses are St. Andrew of Crete (†720), St. Germanus, Patriarch of Byzantium (†733), and especially St. John of Damascus (died after 754). Damascene’s three homilies on the Dormitio (εἰς τὴν κοίμησιν), written for the Feast of the Assumption, “present the bodily Assumption of the Mother of God into Heaven as an ancient heirloom of Catholic faith, and declare that their sole purpose is to develop and establish what in a brief and almost too concise a manner the son has inherited from the father, according to the common saying.”⁴⁰

How the Greeks conceived the Dormitio of the Blessed Virgin appears from a panegyric composed for the fifteenth of August by St. Theodore Studita (about 759–826). “The true mountain of Sion,” he says, “on which, as the Psalmist sings, God condescended to dwell, migrates from among these terrestrial hills and approaches the celestial mountains. To-day the terrestrial heaven, clothed in the garb of immutability, is transplanted to a better and eternal habitation. To-day the divinely-illumined spiritual moon ascends towards the sun of justice and takes leave of this life to re-arise in the splendor of immortality. To-day the golden shrine which God Himself made is removed from the terrestrial tents to the heavenly Jerusalem.”⁴¹

(γ) Is the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin a veritas proxime definibilis? In regard to this question opinions may legitimately differ. Possibly the development and solidification of the dogmatic basis of this doctrine will yet require prolonged labor on the part of Catholic theologians. A long step forward has been taken by setting aside the historic method and basing the argument on strictly dogmatic grounds. The theological as well as the Scriptural argument seem in this question to have but a secondary and subsidiary value, and the case for the Assumption rests mainly on an ecclesiastical tradition which has all the distinguishing characteristics of Apostolicity. In our humble opinion the argument from tradition is so strong that the formal definition of the Assumption is but a question of time. The opportuneness of a solemn definition will hardly be disputed. Perhaps the Church will see fit to obviate certain difficulties by formally defining the bodily Assumption of Our Lady and leaving her physical death to be taught as a theological conclusion. The definition of the Assumption would be the last jewel in the crown of Our Blessed Lady.

Readings: Billuart, De Myst. Christi, diss. 14, art. 1–2.— Gaudin, Assumptio Corporea Mariae Virginis Vindicata, Paris 1670.— *Morgott, Die Mariologie des hl. Thomas, pp. 117 sqq., Freiburg 1878.— *Agostino Lana, La Resurrezione e Corporea Assunzione al Cielo della S. Vergine Madre di Dio, Rome 1880.— Vaccari, De B. Virginis Mariae Morte, Resurrectione et in Coelos Gloriosa Assumptione, 2nd ed., Ferrara 1881.— *Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. III, § 281, Freiburg 1882.— Jannucci, Firmitudo Catholicae Veritatis de Psychosomatica Assumptione Deiparae, Turin 1884.— Bucceroni, Commentarii … de B. Virgine Maria, 4th ed., pp. 193 sqq., Rome 1896.— Chr. Pesch, Praelectiones Dogmaticae, Vol. IV, 3rd ed., pp. 349 sqq., Freiburg 1909.— G. B. Tepe, Institutiones Theologicae, Vol. III, pp. 721 sqq., Paris 1896.— M. J. Spalding, Miscellanea, Vol. II, pp. 736–748, Baltimore 1892.— B. L. Conway, Studies in Church History, pp. 71 sqq., St. Louis 1915.— Di Pietro, L’Assunzione di Maria in Cielo secondo la Storia e la Tradizione, S. Benigno Cavanese 1903.— F. G. Holweck, Maria Himmelfahrt, St. Louis 1910.— F. O’Neill, “The Assumption of the Bl. Virgin according to the Teaching of Pius IX and St. Thomas,” in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 44th year, No. 524, pp. 113–136.— P. Renaudin, La Doctrine de l’Assomption de la T. S. Vierge, Sa Définibilité comme Dogme de Foi Divine Catholique, Paris 1913.

On the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary, cfr. Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 21, sect. 1 sqq.; Canisius, De Maria Virgine, V, 3 sqq., Ingolstadt 1577; Benedict XIV, De Festis Beatae Mariae Virginis, II, 8; Arnaldus, Super Transitu B. Mariae Virginis Deiparae, Genoa 1879; J. Nirschl, Das Grab der hl. Jungfrau Maria, Mainz 1896.

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Footnotes

1. Cfr. Martin, Conc. Vat. Document. Collectio, p. 112, Paderborn 1873. ↩

2. De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 21, sect. 2: “Summae temeritatis reus crederetur, qui tam piam religiosamque sententiam hodie impugnaret.” ↩

3. E. g., Arnaldus, Super Transitu B. Mariae Virginis Deiparae, Genoa 1879; against him Berdani in the Scuola Cattolica, Milan 1880. ↩

4. De Haer., 78, n. 11: “Neque enim immortalem perseverasse definio, aut, utrum mortua sit, confirmare possum… . Sive igitur mortua sit nescimus, sive consepulta sit.” ↩

5. De Divin. Nom., c. 3. ↩

6. Cfr. C. Tischendorff, Apocalypses Apocryphae, item Mariae Dormitio, pp. 95 sqq., Lipsiae 1866; Lipsius, Apokryphe Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden, Leipzig 1887; Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, pp. 113 sqq., Freiburg 1908. ↩

7. De Myst. Christi, diss. 14, art. 1: “Quo loco obierit Deipara, an Ephesi, an Ierosolymis, definiri non potest propter probabilitatem utriusque sententiae.” ↩

8. See the dogmatic treatise on Eschatology. Cfr. Jos. Nirschl, Das Haus und Grab der hl. Jungfrau Maria, Mainz 1900. ↩

9. “Veneranda nobis, Domine, huius est diei festivitas, in qua sancta Dei genitrix mortem subiit temporalem, nec tamen mortis nexibus deprimi potuit, quae Filium tuum Dominum nostrum de se genuit incarnatum.” (Migne, P. L., LXXVIII, 133.) ↩

10. V. supra, Section 2, Thesis I. ↩

11. Cfr. the seventy-third of the propositions of Baius condemned by Pope Pius V, A.D. 1567: “Nemo praeter Christum est absque peccato originali; hinc B. Virgo mortua est propter peccatum ex Adam contractum.” ↩

12. St. Ambrose says, In Luc., II, 61: “Nec litera nec historia docet, ex hac vita Mariam corporalis necis passione migrasse; non enim anima, sed corpus materiali gladio transverberatur.” ↩

13. “Nec partus poenam sensit nec obitus,” says St. John Damascene. Albertus Magnus taught that she died in consequence of her intense love for her Divine Son and her burning desire to be reunited with Him in Heaven. ↩

14. Cfr. De Divin. Nom., III, 2. ↩

15. ἐπὶ τὴν θέαν τοῦ ζωαρχικοῦ καὶ θεοδόχου σώματος. ↩

16. ὁ ἀδελφόθεος. ↩

17. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, p. 5. ↩

18. Cfr. L. Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chrétien, pp. 123 sqq., Paris 1889 (English ed.: Christian Worship: Its Origin and Evolution, London 1903, pp. 269 sqq.); Al. König, Geschichte der Aufbewahrung und Verehrung der Gottesmutter-Reliquien auf Erden, Ratisbon 1897; Kellner, Heortology, pp. 235 sqq., London 1908. ↩

19. Tract. de Assumpt. B. Mariae Virginis, c. 6: “Illud ergo sacratissimum corpus escam vermibus traditum in communi sorte putredinis, quia sentire non valeo, dicere perhorresco.” ↩

20. V. supra, pp. 106 sq. ↩

21. “Ingenite Pater summe, qui tanta ac talia beneficii munera Virgini gloriosae Mariae contulisti, … sicut illa hodie inter angelorum virginumque choros meruit assumi sive dono illibatae carnis feliciter iocundari, sic nos stimulo perfecte exstirpato carnali beatiores ibidem admitte… . O ineffabilis castitas et immaculata virginitas, quae novo et ineffabili modo assumi in superna meruit sede.” (Migne, P. L., LXXXV, 822, 824.) ↩

22. Or. de Dormit. B. Mariae Virginis, 2, 5: “Ut minime corruptus est parturientis uterus, ita nec periit defunctae caro.” ↩

23. Cfr. Deut. XXXIV, 6. ↩

24. Cfr. his Martyrologium, Venice 1745: “Dormitio sanctae Dei genetricis Mariae… . Quo autem venerabile illud Spiritus Sancti templum nutu et consilio divino occultatum sit, plus elegit sobrietas Ecclesiae cum pietate nesciri, quam aliquid frivolum et apocryphum inde tenendo docere.” ↩

25. Or. in Dormit. B. Mariae, 2. (Migne, P. G., XCVIII, 359). ↩

26. V. supra, pp. 43 sq. ↩

27. “Quum iuxta apostolicam doctrinam (Rom. V, 8; 1 Cor. XV, 24, 26, 54, 57; Heb. II, 14, 15) aliisque locis traditam triplici victoria de peccato et de peccati fructibus: concupiscentia et morte veluti ex partibus integrantibus constituatur ille triumphus, quem de satana, antiquo serpente, Christus retulit, quumque Gen. III, 15 Deipara exhibeatur singulariter associata Filio suo in hoc triumpho accedente unanimi SS. Patrum suffragio: non dubitamus quin in praefato oraculo eadem B. Virgo triplici illa victoria praesignificetur illustris adeoque non secus ac de peccato per immaculatam conceptionem et concupiscentia per virginalem maternitatem, sic etiam de inimica morte singularem triumphum relatura per acceleratam ad similitudinem Filii sui resurrectionem ibidem praenuntiata fuit.” (Collect. Lacensis, Vol. VII, p. 869). ↩

28. Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God the Author of Nature and the Supernatural, pp. 222 sq. ↩

29. V. supra, p. 17. ↩

30. Ps. CXXXI, 8: “Surge, Domine, in requiem tuam, tu et arca sanctificationis tuae.” ↩

31. Apoc. XI, 19: “Et apertum est templum Dei in coelo: visa est arca testamenti eius in templo eius.”—Apoc. XII, 1: “Signum magnum apparuit in coelo, mulier amicta sole (γυνὴ περιβεβλημένη τὸν ἥλιον).”—Cfr. Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. III, pp. 584 sq.; Al. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter in der Hl. Schrift, pp. 207 sq. (English ed., pp. 257 sqq.). ↩

32. A Gothic missal used in Gaul up to the eighth century contains this passage: “Fratres carissimi, fusis precibus Dominum imploremus, ut eius indulgentia illuc defuncti liberentur a tartaro, quo beatae Virginis translatum est corpus de sepulcro… . Quo [tempore] Virgo Dei genitrix de mundo migravit ad Christum, quae nec de corruptione suscepit contagium nec resolutionem pertulit in sepulcro: pollutione libera, germine gloriosa, assumptione secura, paradiso dote praelata… . Recte ab ipso suscepta es in assumptione feliciter, quem pie suscepisti conceptura per fidem, ut quae terrae non eras conscia, non teneret rupes inclusa.” (Migne, P. L., LXXII, 245.) Other passages of similar tenor are quoted by Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. III, n. 1757. ↩

33. Cfr. Nicephorus Callistus, Hist. Eccl., XVII, 28. ↩

34. “Quamvis conclusum in sepulcro fuerit immaculatum corporis Mariae tabernaculum, in coelum tamen uti Christus fuerat assumptus, tertia et ipsa die in coelum migravit.” (Hardouin, Concil., XI, 199.) ↩

35. “Ecclesia Armenorum credit et tenet, quod S. Dei genitrix virtute Christi assumpta fuit in coelum cum corpore.” ↩

36. Supra, p. 111. ↩

37. Cfr. Probst, Die ältesten römischen Sakramentarien, pp. 143 sqq., Münster 1892; H. Kihn, Patrologie, Vol. I, p. 169, Paderborn 1904. ↩

38. “Dominus susceptum corpus sanctum [Mariae mortuae] in nube deferri iussit in paradisum, ubi nunc resumpta anima cum electis eius exsultans aeternitatis bonis nullo occasuris fine perfruitur.” (Mirac., I, 4, apud Migne, P. L., LXXI, 708.) ↩

39. Reprinted in Migne, P. G., LXXXVI, 2, 3277 sqq. ↩

40. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, p. 588. ↩

41. For the full text of this picturesque panegyric see Migne, P. G., CVII, 159. Cfr. Pesch, Prael. Dogmat., Vol. IV, 3rd ed., pp. 349 sqq., Freiburg 1909. ↩