There is startlingly early evidence of invocation of the Virgin in
Egypt in a papyrus dating to the late third century, which gives the text of
the prayer known in its Latin version as Sub
tuum praesidium (Giamberardini 1975: 69–97). But prayer to the Virgin
surfaces in patristic literature (apart from stray references) only at the end
of the fifth century, and the papyrus cannot be taken as evidence for piety
outside Egypt itself. Cyril of Alexandria, Proclus of Constantinople, and other
champions of the full acknowledgement of Mary as Theotokos at the time of the Council of Ephesus of 431 took no
interest in the intercessory power of Mary in response to particular petitions:
what they were concerned to celebrate was Mary’s contribution to our redemption
by bearing Christ in her womb; it was the miracle of the Incarnation that
we owe to Mary, not the cures or exorcisms worked by ordinary saints. Only
in the century that followed the Council of Chalcedon (451) did it become
normal for Christians to invoke Mary’s patronage and intercession, and for the
Virgin to descend into the ranks of patron saints (Cunningham 1988). (Richard
M. Price, “Martyrdom and the Cult of the Saints,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook
Harvey and David G. Hunter [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008], 821)
