Footnote 118:[(return)]
The Fourth Lesson begins "Hodie sacra et animata arca."
The Fifth " " "Hodie virgo immaculata."
The Sixth " " "Eva quæ serpentis," &c.—Æ. 603.
These contain the passages to which we have before referred as fixing the belief of the Church of Rome to be in the CORPOREAL assumption of Mary. "Quomodo corruptio invaderet CORPUS ILLUD in quo vita suscepta est? [Greek: pos diaphthora tou zoodochon katatolmaeseie somatos.]"
This, then, is the account nearest to the time of the supposed event; and yet can any thing be more vague, and by way of testimony, more worthless? A writer near the middle of the sixth century refers to a conversation, said to have taken place in the middle of the fifth century; in this reported conversation at Constantinople, the Bishop of Jerusalem is represented to have informed the Emperor and Empress of an ancient tradition, which was believed, concerning a miraculous event, said to have taken place nearly four hundred years before, that the body was taken out of a coffin without the knowledge of those who had deposited it there: Whilst the primitive and inspired account, recording most minutely the journeys and proceedings of some of those very persons, and the letters of others, makes no mention at all of any transaction of the kind; and of all the intermediate historians and ecclesiastical writers not one gives the slightest intimation that any rumour of it had reached them[119].
Footnote 119:[(return)]
Baronius appears not to have referred to this history of Euthymius, but he refers to Nicephorus, and also to a work ascribed to Melito, c. 4, 5. Nicephorus, Paris, 1630. vol. i. p. 168. lib. ii. c. 21. Baronius also refers to lib. 15. c. 14. This Nicephorus was Patriarch of Constantinople. He lived during the reign of our Edward the First, or Edward the Second, and cannot, therefore, be cited in any sense of the word as an ancient author writing on the events of the primitive ages; though the manner in which his testimony is appealed to would imply, that he was a man to whose authority on early ecclesiastical affairs we were now expected to defer.
Another authority to which the writers on the assumption of the Virgin appeal, is that of Nicephorus Callistus, who, at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, dedicated his work to Andronicus Palæologus. The account given by Nicephorus is this:
In the fifth year of Claudius, the Virgin at the age of fifty-nine, was made acquainted with her approaching death. Christ himself then descended from heaven with a countless multitude of angels, to take up the soul of his mother; He summoned his disciples by thunder and storm from all parts of the world. The Virgin then bade Peter first, and afterwards the rest of the Apostles, to come with burning torches[120]. The Apostles surrounded her bed, and "an outpouring of miracles flowed forth." The blind beheld the sun, the deaf heard, the lame walked, and every disease fled away. The Apostles and others sang, as the coffin was borne from Sion to Gethsemane, angels preceding, surrounding, and following it. A wonderful thing then took place. The Jews were indignant and enraged, and one more desperately bold than the rest rushed forward, intending to throw down the holy corpse to the ground. Vengeance was not tardy; for his hands were cut off from his arms[121]. The procession stopped; and at the command of Peter, on the man shedding tears of penitence, his hands were joined on again and restored whole. At Gethsemane she was put into a tomb, but her Son transferred her to the divine habitation.
Footnote 120:[(return)]
This author here quotes the forged work ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, to which we have before referred.
Footnote 121:[(return)]
This tradition seems to have been much referred to at a time just preceding our Reformation. In a volume called "The Hours of the most blessed Mary, according to the legitimate rite of the Church of Salisbury," printed in Paris in 1526, from which we have made many extracts in the second part of this work, the frontispiece gives an exact representation of the story at the moment of the Jew's hands being cut off. They are severed at the wrist, and are lying on the coffin, on which his arms also are resting. In the sky the Virgin appears between the Father and the Son, the Holy Dove being seen above her. The same print occurs also in another part of the volume.
Nicephorus then refers to Juvenal, Archbishop of Jerusalem, as the authority on which the tradition was received, that the Apostles opened the coffin to enable St. Thomas (the one stated to have been absent) to embrace the body; and then he proceeds to describe the personal appearance of the Virgin. [Vol. i. p. 171.]
I am unwilling to trespass upon the patience of my readers by any comment upon such evidence as this. Is it within the verge of credibility that had such an event as Mary's assumption taken place under the extraordinary circumstances which now invest the tradition, or under any circumstances whatever, there would have been a total silence respecting it in the Holy Scriptures? That the writers of the first four centuries should never have referred to such a fact? That the first writer who alludes to it, should have lived in the middle of the fifth century, or later; and that he should have declared in a letter to his contemporaries that the subject was one on which many doubted; and that he himself would not deny it, not because it rested upon probable evidence, but because nothing was impossible with God; and that nothing was known as to the time, the manner, or the persons concerned, even had the assumption taken place? Can we place any confidence in the relation of a writer in the middle of the sixth century, as to a tradition of what an archbishop of Jerusalem attending the council of Chalcedon, had told the sovereigns at Constantinople of a tradition, as to what was said to have happened nearly four hundred years before, whilst in the "Acts" of that Council, not the faintest trace is found of any allusion to the supposed fact or the alleged tradition, though the transactions of that Council in many of its most minute circumstances are recorded, and though the discussions of that Council brought the name and circumstances of the Virgin Mary continually before the minds of all who attended it?
This, however, is a point of too great importance to be dismissed summarily; and seems to require us to examine, however briefly, into the circumstances of that Council.