Monday, June 27, 2022

Maximus the Confessor (580-662): Mary, following her Dormition, was Assumed "to Paradise or somewhere"

Addressing the Dormition and bodily assumption of Mary, Maximus the Confessor wrote that

 

the master and the disciples, and heaven and earth led forth the holy Virgin, the gracious and glorious Lord and master led away the holy soul of his immaculate mother to heaven; the disciples took care of her immaculate body on earth, anointing it with myrrh and tending to the things that she had planned. And after a little while, her son and God wished to translate the body to Paradise or somewhere. (Maximus the Confessor, The Life of the Virgin 110 [trans. Stephen J. Shoemaker; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012], 136, emphasis added)

 

In a footnote to the above, Shoemaker notes that

 

[Michael] Van Esbroeck further suggests here that the author reveals an awareness that there were differences of opinion concerning the ultimate fate of Mary’s body. (Ibid., 197 n. 21, emphasis added)

 

Esbroeck = Maxime le Confesseur: Vie de la Vierge, 2 vols., Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 478-479, Scriptores Iberici, 21-22 (Lovanii: E. Peeters, 1986)