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)
