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The Meeting of the Old and the New: the Typology of Mary the Theotokos in Byzantine Homilies and Hymns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Mary B. Cunningham
Mary B. Cunningham*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

This article presents a preliminary report on a research project which will examine the homiletic and hymnographic treatment of the Virgin Mary in eighth-century Byzantium. The texts requiring detailed study are numerous and not without their problems. Some of the surviving hymns and homilies remain unedited, while the authorship of many texts, including those which have been edited, is still disputed. The first stage of the project will therefore be concerned with identifying all eighth-century Marian homilies and hymns; only after that will it be possible to study the historical, theological, and spiritual content of this material.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 39: The Church and Mary , 2004 , pp. 52 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 For a full list of Greek homilies dedicated to the Virgin Mary, see F. Halkin, ed., Bibliolheca hagiographica graeca, 3 (Brussels, 1957), App. Ill, 123-74.

2 The hymnography written in honour of the Theotokos represents a large body of material which is closely related to the homiletic corpus. For reasons of space, hymns will not be examined in detail in this paper, but they will feature in the larger research project being undertaken.

3 No comprehensive study of eighth-century Byzantine homilies and hymns on the Theotokos yet exists. For fifth-century background on the homiletic tradition and a good model of the treatment needed by later Byzantine Marian homilies, see R. Caro, La homiletica Mariana Criega en el sigh V, 1-3, Marian Library Studies, 3-5 (Dayton, OH, 1971-3). For background on the development of homilies concerned with the Dormition of the Virgin, see M. Jugie, La Mori el I’assomption de la sainte Vierge, Studi e Testi, 114 (Vatican City, 1944); A. Wenger, L’Assomplion de la tres sainte Vierge dans la tradition byzantine du VIe au Xe siecles, fitudes et Documents, Archives de l’Orient Chretien (Paris, 1955).

4 These homilies are all listed in M. Geerard, Clavis patrum graecorum, 3 (Turnhout, 1979) [hereafter CPC], 505-10,519-21, 532,537,539-45, 553; idem, Clavis patrum graecorum: Supplementum (Turnhout, 1998) [hereafter CPG:Suppl.], 461, 464-5, 467, 469-72.

5 Tsironis, Niki J., ‘The Lament of the Virgin Mary from Romanos the Melode to George of Nicomedia. An aspect of the development of the Marian cult’ (University of London, Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 122–6, 179–80 Google Scholar.

6 For background on the growth of the cult of the Virgin from the late sixth century onward, see Averil Cameron, The Theotokos in sixth-century Constantinople: a city finds its symbol’, JThS, 29 (1978), 79-108; eadem, ‘The Virgin’s robe: an episode in the history of early seventh-century Constantinople’, Byzantiott, 49 (1979), 42-56.

7 Scholars disagree on the question whether iconoclast emperors supported or opposed the cult of the Theotokos. For a survey of the problem, see Tsironis, ‘The Lament’, 124-6. She questions K. Parry’s view that the iconoclasts venerated the Theotokos. See Parry, K., Depicting the Word. Byzantine konophile Thought of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (Leiden, 1996), 191–2 Google Scholar.

8 Kelly, J.N.D., Early Christian Doctrines, 5th edn (1977), 69–75 Google Scholar.

9 On the different types of biblical exegesis, which were variously defined as threefold or fourfold in the course of the patristic and medieval periods, see Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Mark Sebanc (Edinburgh, 1998).

10 Young, Frances, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge, 1997), 154 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 A classic study of the early Christian use of typology may be found in Danielou, J., Sacramentum futuri: Etudes sur les origines de la typologie biblique (Paris, 1950)Google Scholar.

12 I. Kalavrezou, ‘Images of the mother: when the Virgin Mary became Meter Theou’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 46 (1991), 97-105.

13 See R.M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (1997); D. Minns, Irenaeus (1994); Behr, J., The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY, 2001), 111–33 Google Scholar.

14 Brock, Sebastian, Bride of Light: Hymns on Mary from the Syriac Churches, Moran ‘Eth’o, 6 (Kottayam, 1994)Google Scholar; Murray, Robert, Symbols of Church and Kingdom (Cambridge, 1975), 144–50 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Mary, the Second Eve in the early Syriac Fathers’, Eastern Churches Review, 3 (1971), 372-84.

15 See Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire. The Development of Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures, 55 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford, 1991), 161-2, 203.

16 For general background, see Frances Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon. A Guide to the Literature and its Background (1983); McGuckin, J., St Cyril of Alexandria. The Christological Controversy. Its History, Theology and Texts (Leiden, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A more personal and political approach to the council is adopted in Cooper, Kate, ‘Contesting the Nativity: wives, virgins, and Pulcheria’s imitatio Mariae’, Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, 19 (1998), 31–43 Google Scholar.

17 Constas, N., Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2003), 139. 66–7 Google Scholar.

18 Pelikan, J., The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of Doctrine, 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago and London, 1971), 261 Google Scholar.

19 On the development of Marian feasts in the Eastern Church, see Jugie, M., ‘Homelies mariales byzantines: textes grecs edites et traduits en latin, II’, Patrologia Orientalis, 19 (Paris, 1926), 289–438 Google Scholar; idem, ‘La premiere fete mariale en Orient et en Occident, l’avent primitive, Echosd’Orient, 22(1923), 129-52.

20 PG 65, cols 698-700; Constas, Proclus of Constantinople, 172.

21 See the fascinating study by N. Constas, ‘Weaving the body of God: Proclus of Constantinople, the Theotokos, and the loom of the flesh’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 3 (1995). 177.

22 Triodion Katanyktikon (Athens, 1983), 321-8. Translated into English in various scholarly and liturgical sources, for example, Limberis, V., Divine Heiress. The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Christian Constantinople (London and New York, 1994), 149–58 Google Scholar; Mary, Mother and Ware, Kallistos, trans, The Lenten Triodion (London and Boston, 1978), 422–36 Google Scholar. A number of studies have attempted to determine the date at which the Akathistos hymn was composed. Most recently, Leena Mari Peltomaa has argued for the period between the third and fourth Ecumenical Councils (431 and 451) in The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn (Leiden, 2001), passim. Scholars previously have ascribed it either to an anonymous author in the sixth or early seventh centuries, or to the famous sixth-century hymnographer, Romanos the Melodist. See, for example, E. Wellesz, The “Akathistos”: a study in Byzantine hymnography’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 9-10 (1956), 141-74.

23 CPG, nos 8170-4, 8181-3, 8197.

24 CPG, nos 8201-2. For further background on Andrew of Crète’s life and works, see S. Vailhe, ‘Saint Andre de Crète’, Échos d’Orient, 5 (1902), 378-87; M.-F. Auzépy, ‘La Carrière d’Andre de Crète’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 88 (1995), 1-12.

25 CPG, nos 8007-15. On Germanos’ homiletic style, see J. List, Studien zur Homiletik Germanos I von Konstantinopel und seiner Zeit (Athens, 1939).

26 CPG, nos 8060-3. For the most recent study of the life and writings of John of Damascus, see Louth, Andrew, St John Damascene. Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theolgy (Oxford, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 See Tsironis, ‘The Lament’, 179-80.

28 See Cunningham, M.B., ‘Andrew of Crete: a high-style preacher of the eighth century’, in Cunningham, M.B. and Allen, Pauline, eds, Preacher and Audience. Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics (Leiden, 1998), 278–86 Google Scholar.

29 PC 97, col. 808: .

30 Ibid., col. 809.

31 See the remarks by the editor, F. Combefis, Ibid., col. 861 n.26.

32 Ibid., col. 868.

33 Ibid., cols 869-73.

34 PG98, col. 321.

35 Published in P. Voulet, ed. and trans., Damascene, S. Jean. Homilies sur la Nativile el la Dormition, Sources Chretiennes, 80 (Paris, 1961), 46–79 Google Scholar.

36 Cf.Ps 113:4(LXX).

37 Cf. Isa. 40.4.

38 Eph. 2.20.

39 Cf. Dan. 2.34, 45.

40 Cf. Ps 67.15-18 (LXX); Voulet, S. Jean Damascene, 60-2.

41 See Wellesz, E., A History of Byzantine Musk and Hymnography (Oxford, 1961), 198 Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., 206-16.

43 Voulet, S. Jean Damascene, 52.

44 N. Tsironis, ‘The Mother of God in the iconoclastic controversy’, in Vassilaki, 27-39.

45 An eloquent witness to the Virgin’s importance after the restoration of orthodoxy is the homily delivered by the Patriarch Photios in March 867 at die inauguration of her mosaic image in the apse of St Sophia. See Mango, C., The Homilies of Photius Patriarch of Constantinople (Cambridge, MA, 1958), esp. 293–5 Google Scholar.

46 See the thought-provoking ideas on this subject by G. Dagron, ‘L’Ombre d’un doute: L’hagiographie en question, VIe-XIe siè;cle’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 46 (1992), 65-6.