A Byzantine Gospel of the Virgin Mary

The Maximus Life of the Virgin opens with an account of Mary's birth and childhood that is based primarily on the Protevangelium of James but also is interspersed with abundant panegyric and theological reflection. After Mary is given into Joseph's care, she travels with him from Jerusalem to Galilee, where six months later the angel Gabriel appears to announce her conception. The Life's account of the annunciation then unfolds through an extended line-by-line exegesis of Luke 1:28–56, beginning with Gabriel's initial words to the Virgin. Coming quickly to “the Lord is with thee,” the Life describes how through these words the angel announced to Mary the end of women's subordination to men: “[He said,] ‘The Lord is with you,' and it was the destruction and annihilation of the first curse, which had been placed over women so that man was established as the master of woman and the submission of woman to man was ordered.”¹¹

At first glance, the language of this passage is rather startling, and it would be easy to mistake it for saying more than it actually does. This van Esbroeck appears to do when he identifies the passage in his “Index théologique” under the heading “Émancipation des sexes par la parole ‘Le Seigneur est avec toi'.” Not surprisingly, this entry is more than a little misleading, and the text does not promote the “emancipation of the sexes” in the way that many modern readers might expect.

As the exegesis of “the Lord is with thee” continues, it becomes altogether clear that the “emancipation” from male authority in view is not the liberation of all women equally but only of those whose dedication to virginity frees them from submission to men. Gabriel's words, the Life explains, also free women in the same way from the pain of bearing children, which, we soon learn, is through adopting a life of virginity:

Clearly, the “liberation” of women that begins in Mary comes through the introduction of virginity, which, according to the author, brings not only independence from men, but also, rather obviously, freedom from the pains of childbirth.¹³

So is the curse of Eve lifted by the possibility of becoming a virgin, which, as the Life further informs us, had not been an option for women before Mary, who originated the practice of female virginity.

After some extended reflections on the nativity and the presentation in the temple that draw primarily from the canonical gospels, the Life gives a rather brief account of Christ's mission, in which Mary and several other women appear surprisingly in focus as important figures within the movement. This highly compressed summary of Jesus' ministry is altogether remarkable for its representation of Mary as a leader within the Jesus movement, as well as for the attention devoted to other female followers of Jesus over its rather limited extent. Following the Gospel of John, the Life begins this section with the events at Cana, highlighting Mary's role in the commencement of Christ's public ministry. Mary's involvement in her son's movement does not end in Cana, however, much as the fourth gospel itself also implies (2:12). Instead, the Life informs us that Mary “remained inseparable from her good Lord and beloved son” during his ministry, and “wherever he went, she accompanied him,” following him and listening to his teachings.¹⁴

This introduces what is to become a recurring theme of this section: Mary's uniquely constant presence at her son's side over the course his life and her authoritative knowledge of his teachings. As for Joseph, the Life explains that he remained behind in Nazareth on account of his advanced age, but “his sons James and Jude followed Christ as disciples, and his daughters became disciples of the holy Theotokos.”¹⁵ This description of Joseph's daughters as disciples of the Virgin Mary, rather than of their step-brother Jesus, is somewhat surprising, and it probably is connected with Mary's repeated identification as the leader of the many women who followed her son: “There were also many women there who followed Jesus from Galilee and provided for him [Matt 27:55], and the holy and glorious mother of the Lord was the leader of them all, their source of support and their mediator with the Lord her son.”¹⁶

Among these many women who were “disciples of the Lord”¹⁷

(a title apparently not limited to his male followers), two women in particular are singled out by name for further consideration. Firstly, the Life mentions Joanna (from Luke 8:3), a wealthy and honorable woman who, upon hearing Christ's advice to the rich young ruler, did what her male counterpart could not: “She renounced everything and abandoned her spouse and children, her house and land and all her possessions and followed the Lord, and she remained with his holy mother all the time thereafter.”¹⁸ Mary of Magdala also appears at the end of this section, where she is introduced as a woman “of exceptional wealth and of noble birth, and she showed zeal in being a disciple of the Lord and served Christ and his pure mother with faith.”¹⁹ After brief reflection on her rescue from the seven demons, the Life concludes its discussion of Christ's ministry with the following remarks on the Magdalene's important role in the beginnings of Christianity:

Thus the Life identifies Mary of Magdala not only as a disciple and minister, but also as an apostle who was the most outstanding of Christ's female disciples and whose apostolic leadership was comparable with that of Christ's most distinguished male follower, Peter—a surprisingly “modern” assessment of a woman's leadership in the early church.

The Life next takes up the events of the passion beginning with the Last Supper, where the Virgin makes a rather unusual appearance, the significance of which is open to some interpretation. Following a brief theological meditation on the passion, the Life quickly returns to the narrative with a reminder of the Virgin Mary's constant presence alongside her son and her leadership role within his ministry:

The Life then turns immediately to the Last Supper, introducing it with a rather obscure passage wherein the subject is not altogether clear and which van Esbroeck translates as follows: “C'est pourquoi lorsque le repas, le grand mystère se déroulait, elle se sacrifiait elle-même comme le prêtre et elle était sacrifiée, elle offrait et elle était offerte.”²²

According to van Esbroeck, the Life here presents Mary at the Last Supper in the role of a priest who offers herself as a sacrifice of reconciliation, an image more traditionally associated with her son's sacrifice and its repetition in the Eucharist. Is it possible that the Life has elevated Mary in this way to the status of a corredemptrix, whose co-redeeming activity is present even in the Eucharist? If so, this would surely be the most remarkable passage of what is otherwise an already important text. Indeed, this reaches well beyond what modern Roman Catholic advocates of a corredemptrix dogma have in view in that it identifies Mary's role in the process of redemption at a level essentially equal (rather than complimentary) to that of her son. Inasmuch as the earliest known affirmation of Mary's co-redemptive role is found in John the Geometrician's Life of the Virgin, which depends directly on this text, we certainly should consider this as a distinct possibility.²³

While van Esbroeck's translation of this passage is certainly possible, and its immediate context offers some hints in this direction, it is also grammatically possible—and I think it much more likely—that the Life instead refers here to Christ's reconciling self-sacrifice and its connection with the Eucharist. As van Esbroeck explains in a footnote to his translation, the original text does not specify the subject's gender here; in light of this he concludes: “En dépit de l'absence en géorgien d'un indice féminin, il est impossible d'appliquer ces verbes au Christ comme le fait Jean le Géomètre.”

²⁴

Though it is true that Georgian verbs do not distinguish between male and female subjects, this is overstated, and nothing in the text makes the interpretation of Christ as the subject “impossible.” In van Esbroeck's defense, this curious passage follows immediately after the description of Mary's constant involvement and leadership in her son's ministry cited above, and it is closely linked with this idea by the words “because of this” [

]. This phrase suggests some sort of intrinsic, even causal, connection between Mary's unique role in her son's ministry and the description of redemptive self-sacrifice at the Last Supper that follows. In view of this, there is admittedly a certain logic to identifying Mary as the subject of the following sentence, connecting her leadership in Jesus' ministry with a special role for her in the process of redemption. Furthermore, the immediately following sentence begins by introducing “the Lord Jesus” specifically by name, as if to indicate a deliberate subject change. On a rhetorical level, then, it seems rather plausible that Mary should, in fact, be understood as this sentence's subject who somehow at the Last Supper offered herself as a reconciling sacrifice.

None of this, however, precludes the possibility that Jesus is instead the subject, and despite van Esbroeck's overreaching claim to the contrary, it is far more likely that the Life here refers to Jesus, not Mary, as the one who at the Last Supper “sacrificed himself as a priest and was sacrificed; he reconciled and was reconciled.” This interpretation results in a rather routine expression of Christ's simultaneous role as both priest and victim at the institution of the Eucharist. Conversely, it is rather difficult to imagine that this otherwise quite orthodox text has elevated Mary to such an unprecedented role in the economy of salvation. Furthermore, the use of the word

(“then”) to introduce the following sentence, in which Christ is specifically identified as the subject, possibly suggests that in this sentence Christ continues some sort of action that he began in the preceding sentence: “Then the Lord Jesus took care of the twelve disciples and those whom he wished, and he gave the exalted mysteries, the signs of the divine Passover: by the bread and the drink he gave his precious body and blood.”

²⁵

Finally, as van Esbroeck indicates in his note on this passage, John the Geometrician's Life of the Virgin clearly specifies Jesus as the subject of the parallel passage.²⁶

Inasmuch as John's Greek Life emphasizes Mary's co-redemptive role in truly unprecedented fashion, it seems unlikely that John would have altered this passage to replace Mary here with Christ. Nevertheless, it is rather difficult at this point to assess the full significance of John's Life for understanding this episode in the absence of van Esbroeck's long awaited edition of this text.²⁷

Hopefully, once published, John's Life will bring clarity not only to this passage but to many other aspects of the early history of Marian vitae. For the time being, however, it seems rather likely that van Esbroeck's enthusiasm for this exciting new text inspired him to propose a questionable translation of what is admittedly an ambiguous passage.

From the Last Supper the Life moves forward to consider the events of the passion, and here again Mary's role is amplified considerably beyond what appears in the canonical gospels. In a surprising and somewhat ironic twist, the Life identifies Mary as the primary source of the very Passion Narratives that pass her over in almost complete silence; Mary is the unique authority for most of what the gospel writers report about the final day of Jesus' life. She alone, we are told, remained constantly with her son from his arrest until his burial, and consequently the collective testimony of the apostles and evangelists to these events depends almost entirely on her witness.

When she was prevented by guards from witnessing her son's appearance before Annas and Caiaphas, the Life explains that she thoroughly questioned all those who had been witnesses, thus insuring that she possessed a complete and accurate account of all that transpired during her son's passion.²⁹

As for the crucifixion itself, John, the Beloved Disciple, was also present, and presumably others, but after her son's death, Mary appears to have been left alone to see to his burial. While his lifeless body still hung on the cross, Mary frantically searched the environs of Golgotha to find a suitable resting place for his body, eventually discovering an open and unused tomb in a nearby garden. According to this expansion of the canonical account, Mary made inquiries and learned that the tomb belonged to a certain Joseph, a rich and noble man who was an acquaintance of Pilate and had also secretly been a follower of Jesus. Mary summoned Joseph and asked not only that he allow her son to be buried in his garden tomb, but also that he appear before his friend Pilate to request Christ's body, so that it might be taken down from the cross and given to him for burial. Joseph and Mary watched as the body was removed from the cross, and together with Nicodemus (who suddenly appears), they anointed the body and sealed it in the tomb.³⁰

Then Joseph, Nicodemus, “and the others who were with them” left the tomb. “Nevertheless, the holy and completely immaculate mother of the Lord alone remained there, and she watched with the untiring eyes of the soul and of the body, and she bent her knees ceaselessly and prayed without stopping: she was crying out and expecting [the moment] when the sweet light of the resurrection would shine forth.”³¹

At this point the Life of the Virgin suddenly backs up to consider the conflicting reports of the canonical gospels regarding the women who were present at the crucifixion, attributing their discrepancies both to the sheer number of women who followed Jesus, as well as to the fact that his male followers had fled out of fear. Since the men were not there (excepting John, presumably), there was later on some confusion as to exactly which of Jesus' many female followers kept the vigil at his cross. Yet even these faithful women eventually fell victim to fear: Mary of Magdala and Mary of Cleopas, who proved the most steadfast, finally became afraid when the crucifiers offered Jesus the sponge of vinegar, and they fled, leaving the Virgin Mary behind as the sole witness to the end of his life. Still fearing, the two other Marys returned to observe the tomb from a distance for a time, in accordance with the canonical accounts, only, then, to be scared away when the scribes and Pharisees arrived with a cohort of troops to guard the body against theft.³²

After resting on the Sabbath, these other women again returned to the tomb on Sunday morning, but they were too late: the stone was already rolled back, the tomb was empty, and Christ was risen.

Only Mary of Nazareth remained constantly at the tomb, and she alone beheld the great earthquake that unsealed the tomb and knocked out the guards. The other women saw only the results and learned from the angel that Christ was risen and no longer in the tomb. Christ's mother was the sole eyewitness to his resurrection, and consequently, the gospels writers depend on her testimony for their knowledge of these events. According to the Life, the Virgin Mary was the first witness to her son's resurrection, and moreover, she first “made it known to his disciples and announced it before the myrrh-bearing women,” namely, Mary of Magdala and Mary of Cleopas.³³

Mary Magdalene's “Paschal privilege” is thus usurped in the Life by Mary of Nazareth, who replaces her (and the other women at the tomb) as the apostola apostolorum. This is by no means an uncommon phenomenon in early Christian literature, as many have noted,³⁴ but the strategy employed by the Life is rather unique. Earlier writers, apparently beginning with Tatian's Diatessaron, were inspired by certain textual ambiguities to identify the Mary of John 20 with Christ's mother instead of the Magdalene. Yet the Life of the Virgin adopts an altogether different strategy in identifying the Virgin Mary as the first witness to the resurrection. According to the Life, Mary observed the very resurrection itself, in contrast to the myrrh-bearing women, who only discovered an empty tomb. Moreover, the Virgin was the first to announce the resurrection to the apostles, informing them before the myrrh-bearers returned from the tomb. Thus, Mary of Magdala and the other women still discover the empty tomb in the Life of the Virgin, but they are “scooped” by Mary of Nazareth, whose steadfast vigil at the tomb enabled her not only to behold the resurrection itself but also to deliver the news first to the apostles before the myrrh-bearers had returned from the tomb.

The Life's author was fully aware that this account deviates from the narratives of the four canonical gospels, which ignore Mary's constant vigil at the tomb and instead present the other Marys as the first to discover and announce the resurrection. Consequently, he addresses this discrepancy directly in a passage that offers the following justification:

The Life thus explains the omission of the Virgin's role as the first witness to her son's resurrection as based on two different, but not completely unrelated, concerns. First, the gospel writers realized that if they were to write the truth, i.e., that Christ's mother was an eyewitness to his resurrection, they would immediately invite suspicion from potential converts, who for any number of reasons might doubt the reliability of a mother's testimony in such circumstances. In addition, the evangelists feared that some readers would automatically dismiss any report of Mary's involvement in the resurrection as an attempt on their part to magnify the Virgin by inventing her participation in the central event of the Christian faith (which, it would seem, did in fact happen at some later stage). Consequently, the gospels focus instead on the witness of the myrrh-bearing women, who discovered the empty tomb, and represent them as the first to announce the resurrection, since their testimony would occasion fewer doubts. The Virgin's role was left out in favor of a better “marketing strategy,” and thanks to its success, the Life's author could finally tell his readers the whole story.

The Life's rather emphatic insistence on the roles played by Mary and these other women as the first witnesses to the resurrection presents an interesting contrast to the attitudes displayed in some of the earliest Christian writings. As is well known, there is disagreement between Paul and the evangelists as to who was first to see the risen Christ: the gospel writers unanimously ascribe this initial vision to various women, while Paul, writing several decades earlier, reports that Jesus appeared first to Peter and the twelve (1 Cor 15:5). Biblical scholars remain divided as to which of these two rival traditions can lay claim to being the earliest, but more important for the present purposes is the controversy occasioned by this difference within the early church.³⁶

Regardless of which tradition may in fact be the “original,” the differing accounts of the resurrection quickly became the subject of debates between proto-orthodox Christians and their opponents during the second and third centuries, bringing to the fore issues of gender and authority. Early proto-orthodox writers sought to dissociate their belief in Christ's resurrection from the testimony of Mary Magdalene and the other women at the tomb, emphasizing instead the male chain of authority attested by Paul. This was designed to legitimate their practice of male leadership while simultaneously criticizing the more gender-inclusive patterns of leadership in some heterodox communities.³⁷ As I have shown elsewhere, similar concerns are also evident in early Marian literature, where an earlier tradition of exclusively female witness to the events of Mary's death has been all but erased and replaced with a more recent tradition emphasizing the additional presence of male apostles for these important events.³⁸

The rather different attitude toward the testimony of women in the Life of the Virgin is no doubt partly explained by the very different circumstances in which it was composed: the Life's author lived in a Christian empire where belief in the resurrection could be taken for granted, and no one would think to question its truth simply on the basis that the first witnesses to resurrection were female. Nevertheless, it is still somewhat surprising to find these women and their testimony so strongly emphasized within a religious community that almost completely excluded women from positions of leadership within the church. This augmented account of Mary and the other women as apostolae apostolorum, as the first of Christ's followers to preach the gospel, certainly suggests an ancient precedent that could be used to argue for greater inclusion of women among the church leadership in communities using this text. Yet the focus on the witness of these women comports with the Life's broader theme of highlighting the leadership of Mary and other women both within the Jesus movement and the early church. For whatever reason, this Life persistently expands the canonical gospel narratives to identify Mary and these other women as important and influential figures in the origins of Christianity in ways that contrast sharply with the gender roles of the early Byzantine church.

The Life's emphasis on women's leadership continues even after Christ's ascension and into the nascent church, as the Life picks up on Luke's notice in Acts 1: 14 that Mary was present in the upper room at Pentecost together with the other leaders of the early church. The Life explains that this was because “the holy Theotokos was always a participant and a leader in every good thing,” and, more specifically, because “she directed the fasting and prayer of the holy apostles.”³⁹

Rather astonishingly, this penultimate section of the Life brings Mary to the fore as the primary spiritual leader of the early Christian community. In the period between her son's ascension and her own, Mary serves as the director of the early Christian community, supervising the activities of the apostles as they sought to spread the gospel. When the apostles first depart for their missions, Mary is the one who sends them forth and guides their activities: “She sent out the other disciples to preach to those near and far.”⁴⁰ Initially, she herself sets out together with John, to whom she has been entrusted, intending to serve alongside the other apostles in the mission field, taking Mary Magdalene and the other myrrh-bearing women with her. Before they get very far, however, Christ appears to his mother and instructs her to turn back, ordering that Mary Magdalene and the other women are to continue on with John, and they “worked with him and were apostles with him.”⁴¹

As for Mary the Virgin, she returned to Jerusalem to take up a position more exalted even than that of the apostles—she was charged instead “to lead the people of faith and to direct the church of Jerusalem with James the brother of the Lord, who had been appointed as bishop there.”⁴²

The description of her leadership over the apostles and the early Christian community that ensues is quite extraordinary:

Mary here is considerably more than just a spiritual advisor or inspiration to the apostles—they regularly report back to her with the content and results of their preaching and then go forth again to carry out their work as she instructs them. She is much more than just an honored and revered vessel of holiness—she oversees all the activities of the early church through her direct supervision of the apostles, teaching them not only how to pray but what they should preach. Thus the unity of the church, its order, and its doctrine are maintained by Mary, to whom the apostles report and by whom they are instructed.

This portrait of Mary as essentially the “Matriarch” of the early Christian community certainly presents a stark contrast with the exclusion of women from church leadership at the time when the text was composed, not to mention its dissonance with the rather negative assessment of women in much patristic literature.⁴⁵

In view of this, one might expect to find a regular appeal to Marian exceptionalism, in which the Virgin's unique status is held forth to justify her position of leadership and authority and, perhaps more importantly, to explain the exclusion of other women from similar roles in the present. But rather remarkably, no such excuses are made. The Life offers no apologies whatsoever for Mary's gender in presenting her as an important leader in her son's ministry and in the early church, and moreover, it makes no indication that similar roles are to be denied to other women. To the contrary, it would appear that the Life's very deliberate focus on various other women who served as leaders in the Jesus movement and the early church and who played key roles during the events of the passion (when the male disciples fled) is meant to indicate that Mary's status in the early community is, in fact, not at all exceptional. In particular, the Life's persistent attention to Mary of Magdala, whom it specifically identifies as an apostle equal in rank to Peter, suggests that a woman need not be the immaculate, virgin mother of God to exercise authority within the Christian community.

The Life of the Virgin continues with a rather intriguing account of the Virgin's dormition, which is noteworthy for its effort to synthesize the various traditions of the ancient dormition narratives; it is the earliest known attempt to produce such a harmony. Yet, in spite of its rather heavy reliance on the Palm and Bethlehem traditions for its account of the Virgin's last days and her death, her “assumption” is related by means of the “late apostle” tradition, the apostle in this case being identified as Thomas.⁴⁶

This narrative device is particularly important, as it allows an easy transition to the traditions about Constantinople's famous Marian relics, the various items of clothing once belonging to her: a robe, a shroud, “wrappings,” and a belt, according to different sources.⁴⁷ The Life then incorporates in toto the legend of Galbius and Candidus, making this the first text to combine the traditions of Mary's dormition with those of her miraculous robe and its pious theft by Galbius and Candidus.⁴⁸ Finally, the Life of the Virgin concludes with a hymn to the Virgin that is loosely based on the Akathist, followed by theological reflections on the dormition and assumption and a closing hymn on the assumption.

In its description of the ministry of Christ and the early church, however, this Life of the Virgin presents a remarkable portrait of women's leadership in the earliest Christian community that is all the more striking given the male dominance in the leadership of the Byzantine church. The text creates an image that was certainly at odds with the cultural environment in which it was produced, even though there remained some vestige of women's leadership at this time in the female diaconate.⁴⁹

While the text does not reach quite as far as van Esbroeck would have liked in some places, particularly in his interpretations of the annunciation and Mary's role at the Last Supper, it nevertheless provides a welcome antidote to the persistent image of Mary (among the other women of the New Testament) as a passive and submissive participant in the origins of Christianity—an image that is frequently encountered in patristic literature. Yet, given this dissonance with the broader discourse on Mary and gender in early Byzantium, what, if anything, can we make of its impact and reception? One way to gauge this is to compare this earliest Life of the Virgin with other related Marian literature from the middle Byzantine period to see if this emphasis on Mary's leadership in formative Christianity made any significant impression on later writers.

The Reception of Mary's Leadership in Middle Byzantine Literature

The earliest document with which we can make such a comparison is the second oldest Life of the Virgin, a considerably shorter work than its predecessor that was written around the turn of the ninth century by Epiphanius the Monk, a resident of the Kallistratos monastery in Constantinople.⁵⁰

Like the Georgian Life, Epiphanius's biography also draws on earlier sources, some of which he identifies, including the homilies on the dormition by John of Thessalonica and Andrew of Crete, as well as the Transitus of Ps.-John, but not the Maximus Life of the Virgin. Epiphanius thus offers an independent narration of Mary's life that presents a rather different portrait of the Virgin and her role in the formation of Christianity. Mary's birth and childhood are summarized from the Protevangelium of James, and the events of the annunciation and the nativity unfold according to the canonical sources (as well as the Protevangelium). Yet, from the nativity until her dormition, the account of which comprises nearly one-fourth of the text, Mary is almost completely absent from her own biography. Most astonishing is her total erasure from the events at Cana: we learn that the groom's name was Simon and that he became a follower of Jesus shortly thereafter (presumably Simon the Cananaean), but no mention at all is made of Mary's role or even of her presence at Cana.⁵¹ In this relatively quick narration of Christ's public ministry, Mary appears briefly on only four occasions: at Joseph's death she is named as his wife; twice Epiphanius notes that the mother of the sons of Zebedee and Mary of Magdala lived with her;⁵² the fourth may in fact refer to another woman.⁵³ Furthermore, Epiphanius explicitly excludes Mary from the events of her son's resurrection—she does not even go to the tomb with the other women after the crucifixion but, instead, remains at home out of grief.⁵⁴ The Life gives no description of the nascent church, and following a brief mention of the ascension, the narrative concludes with the Virgin's dormition.

On the whole, Epiphanius's Life stays close to the four gospels and the “canonical” accounts of Mary's birth and death, though it presents even a minimalist reading of these sources in deleting her from the Cana story. Excepting Mary Magdalene's identification as one who supported the movement with her wealth (following the gospels),⁵⁵

there is no focus on Mary or any other women as active in the formation of Christianity. Moreover, Epiphanius underlines Mary's entirely exceptional status in regard to other women by describing her purity and virginity as not threatened by temptation or involving struggle, as with other women (and men); instead, her purity was part of her nature and was “distinctive from all other women and alien to human nature.”⁵⁶ Therefore, not only does Epiphanius's Life of the Virgin show no influence from the earlier Maximus Life, he presents an altogether different portrait of Mary's involvement in her son's ministry and in the life of the early church.

By way of contrast, the homilies of George of Nicomedia, written at the end of the ninth century, show considerable influence from the Maximus Life of the Virgin. George's two homilies on the passion depend rather heavily on the Georgian Life's Passion Narrative, borrowing many of its traditions concerning Mary's involvement in her son's crucifixion and resurrection.⁵⁷

Following the Life of the Virgin, George describes Mary as the only one who remains constantly with Jesus from the events of his arrest to his death on Golgotha. She is separated from him only during his appearance before Annas and Caiaphas, when, as in the Maximus Life, she is kept outside and learns what happened inside only from the reports of others.⁵⁸ She then follows her son to the cross, where she converses with him and laments, and she sees to his burial herself. Again following the Georgian Life, she searches for a tomb; finding one nearby, she learns that it belongs to Joseph of Arimathea, one of her son's followers, whom she enlists to help her obtain the body from Pilate.⁵⁹ In his second passion homily, On the Immaculate Virgin's Vigil at the Tomb, George continues the story, borrowing yet more material from the Life of the Virgin. Here he describes Mary's constant presence at her son's tomb, from his burial to his resurrection, and, like the Life of the Virgin, he identifies Mary as the first to see the risen Christ and as a witness to the actual events of the resurrection itself.⁶⁰ George also follows the Maximus Life in explaining this episode's omission from the canonical gospels: the Spirit inspired the gospel writers to leave this information out because the testimony of a mother would invite suspicion, and the tradition might be interpreted as a spurious effort to enhance the Virgin's glory.⁶¹Therefore, the evangelists focused instead on the discovery of the empty tomb by the myrrh-bearing women as being more reliable.

These similarities indicate that George not only had read the Maximus Life of the Virgin but largely approved of its image of Mary and incorporated its amplified traditions into his homilies on a large scale. The alternative—that the Life of the Virgin instead borrowed these traditions from George's homilies—seems impossible because it would make this Life of the Virgin a tenth-century composition. As I have argued elsewhere, however, the Maximus Life bears convincing marks of production during the seventh century, particularly in the sources that it has used, many of which its author specifically identifies.⁶²

All of the Georgian Life's sources are prior to the seventh century, and in contrast to Epiphanius the Monk's more recent Life of the Virgin, the Georgian Life does not make use of the homilies on the dormition by John of Thessalonica and Andrew of Crete. Moreover, the Life's author apparently had access to a broad range of dormition apocrypha, the divergent narratives of which he combined into an original harmony. This better fits within the seventh century, when a wide variety of dormition narratives continued to circulate, than within tenth-century Constantinople, when the Transitus of Ps.-John and John of Thessalonica's Homily on the Dormition came to predominate, along with the dormition homilies by Andrew, Germanus of Constantinople, and John of Damascus. Furthermore, the Georgian Life of the Virgin manifests a persistent concern with the issues of the council of Chalcedon that resonates strongly with the abiding christological debates of the seventh century but seems somewhat out of place in a work from tenth-century Constantinople. It is therefore highly improbable that the Life of the Virgin could be a tenth-century forgery. Finally, George of Nicomedia's allusion to material from the Maximus Life outside of its passion sequence also signals his dependence on this text. In his homily On the Burial of Christ, George has Jesus explain from the cross that his mother will be the spiritual guide and director of his disciples after he is gone. As he entrusts his mother to the Beloved Disciple, Jesus explains that Mary will be the leader of the other disciples in his absence.⁶³ More than likely, George knows the tradition of Mary's leadership in the nascent church from having read the complete text of the Georgian Life, and here he introduces this theme at an earlier point in the story by having Christ announce it from the cross. Thus, George of Nicomedia's apparent use of the Life of the Virgin in his homilies on the passion is a confirmation of both the Life's antiquity and its influence on middle Byzantine writers.

The end of the tenth century saw the production of two new biographies of Mary, both of which depend directly on the Maximus Life of the Virgin. These are the roughly contemporary Lives of the Virgin by Symeon the Metaphrast, the famed collector and redactor of Byzantine saints' Lives, and John the Geometrician, a member of the Byzantine aristocracy who wrote his Life of the Virgin after retiring from the army to take up a monastic career. These two Lives are clearly related to one another in some fashion, and scholars have long debated which account served as the other's source. Martin Jugie initially argued for Symeon the Metaphrast's dependence on John the Geometrician's Life, while Wenger maintained that it was John who had reworked Symeon's text.⁶⁴

But the publication of the Maximus Life of the Virgin has now resolved this impasse. As van Esbroeck and I have both demonstrated, this Georgian Life clearly served as the primary source for the Lives of Symeon and John.⁶⁵ While it is not completely impossible that either Symeon or John has used the other's narrative in composing his own, it is far more likely that both authors independently reworked the contents of this earliest Life of the Virgin into their own Marian biographies. Although it is difficult to resolve the matter decisively in the absence of a complete edition of John the Geometrician's Life,⁶⁶ careful analysis of what has been published shows that mutual dependence on the Maximus Life is almost certain.⁶⁷

Of these two Lives, the one by John the Geometrician is more faithful to their older, common source. Comparison of the published excerpts from John's Life with the Georgian Life reveals that John has reproduced much of his model. Nevertheless, he frequently refashions this material to move in some new Mariological directions, including, most notably, the idea of Mary as corredemtrix, which John is the first to introduce.⁶⁸

It is difficult, however, to compare John's Life and the Maximus Life with regards to the representation of Mary's role in her son's ministry and in the nascent church because, unfortunately, only the conclusion of John's Life, i.e., its account of the dormition, has been published. For this, we must rely on the handful of quotations from the Bollandists' copy of the Genoa manuscript of John's Life that were published by Jean Galot in his article on John's presentation of Mary as corredemptix. Fortunately, enough of these citations coincide with key passages from the Georgian Life that we can make some limited observations about John's redaction of his source.

Galot's article does not discuss John's account of the annunciation. This is surely telling, since it is here that the Georgian Life comes the closest to the idea of co-redemption. If something similar were in John's Life, one would expect Galot to comment on it. John's Life does, however, replicate its source's emphasis on Mary's central role in both her son's ministry and in the early church. As in the Maximus Life, John describes Mary as inseparable from her son and involved in all the activities of his ministry from beginning to end, extending this image in a new direction with the idea that Mary shared directly in his miracle-working as well as in his redemptive suffering.⁶⁹

Inasmuch as Mary's co-redemptive role is most pronounced in the events of the passion, the bulk of Galot's citations are from this section of John's Life. Although he does not reproduce the passage concerning the Last Supper, van Esbroeck's textual notes suggest a strong similarity at this point.⁷⁰

At her son's arrest, Mary remains with her son, and her steadfastness is contrasted with the flight of Jesus' other followers. In fact, according to John, “she was arrested with him, her body with his body, her soul with his soul.” Consequently, when Jesus appears before Annas and Caiaphas, she is not kept outside by the guards, left to interrogate eyewitnesses, as in the Georgian Life. According to John, “she too was arrested and brought before Annas and Caiaphas,” where she stood beside him and was condemned with him.⁷¹

Mary is also present for the crucifixion, where her sufferings at the sight of her son's execution are interpreted by John as sharing in Christ's redemptive suffering. In fact, John actually goes so far as to declare that Mary suffered more in the events of the passion than did her son. After all, he was God and had chosen to suffer, while she had to face these sufferings with the frailty of a human being, and being a woman at that.⁷²

In several passages, some of which have been published by Wenger, John explicitly links Mary's suffering with the process of human redemption, explaining that Mary suffered on our behalf, to achieve our salvation, and that Christ gave her as our ransom, while she, like the Father, gave him over to death on our behalf.⁷³ In this, John paints a highly exalted portrait of the Virgin, who, as Hilda Graef observes, appears at times “as a semi-divine being” and is “so unequivocally approximated to the Godhead.”⁷⁴

Following her son's death, Mary remains at his tomb and, accordingly, is the only one to behold his resurrection—the other women find only an empty tomb, as in the Maximus Life.⁷⁵

John also reproduces Mary's important leadership role in the early church, identifying her as the the apostles' spiritual director, who supervises their fasting and prayer. Perhaps more remarkably, he preserves Mary's role as the apostles' leader and teacher, who directs their activities and supervises their preaching. She sends them forth to their missions, and they return to her to debrief and restore their courage and enthusiasm before going back into the field. According to John's Life, “the apostles and all the disciples had her as their center and root and soul”; she was “the root and foundation of the preaching.”⁷⁶

Judging from the citations published in Galot's article, it appears that John has retained much of the earlier Life's representation of Mary as a leader in her son's ministry and in the early church. These themes are of course rather agreeable to John's broader theological interest in presenting Mary as corredemptrix: John seeks to elevate Mary to her son's status, emphasizing her unique role in the process of human redemption, and the Maximus Life's portrayal of Mary at the center of the drama of salvation readily suits this purpose. Yet, the resulting image of Mary as nearly superhuman in John's Life contrasts rather sharply with the Maximus Life, where Mary is not at all put on a level with her son but is entirely human. While the Georgian Life identifies Mary as a mediator and intercessor for all the faithful,⁷⁷

the work of salvation is always ascribed exclusively to her son and not to her. Comparison of the two vitae thus shows that the image of Mary as corredemptrix is clearly John's work. Nevertheless, the representation of Mary's involvement in her son's ministry and in the early church that is present in his source was certainly amenable to this purpose, and it appears that John has largely reproduced it.⁷⁸

This leaves Symeon the Metaphrast's Life of the Virgin, which is considerably shorter than both the Maximus Life and John the Geometrician's near contemporary revision of their shared source. Symeon was a high court official in tenth-century Constantinople who, as a layperson, took an extraordinary interest in hagiography, resulting in his famous collection of saints' Lives. Hailed by Albert Ehrhard as “a revolution in the field of hagiography,” this collection quickly became a staple of monastic liturgies, supplying the standard readings for the major feasts.⁷⁹

As a result, Symeon's revised Life of the Virgin enjoyed a very wide circulation in Byzantine monastic circles from the eleventh century onward.

In contrast to John's contemporary Life of the Virgin, Symeon leaves out a lot from the Maximus Life, including most of the traditions regarding Mary's participation in her son's ministry prior to the passion. After an extensive exegesis of the canonical birth narratives, Symeon very briefly recalls the events of Cana and then quickly transitions to the passion with the remark that Mary “was with her son uninterruptedly and always near him, and in times of distress and of the passion, when all the disciples and friends and acquaintances completely abandoned him and looked to their feet, she was not separated from him.”⁸⁰

Symeon then begins an extended description of Mary's role in the events of the passion, and here he stays fairly close both to the Maximus Life and John's Life.⁸¹ Symeon briefly notes Mary's witness to her son's trial and condemnation, including his appearance before Annas and Caiaphas. Mary is also present for the crucifixion, and Symeon describes her considerable suffering at the sight of her son on the cross. Then, following the Maximus Life, Mary seeks and finds a tomb nearby, and learning that it belongs to one of Jesus' disciples, she enlists the owner, Joseph, to secure from Pilate her son's body, which they then bury. As others leave the tomb, Mary alone remains behind, and, as in the other Lives (and George of Nicomedia's homilies), she is the only witness to Christ's actual resurrection, a detail omitted from the official accounts because, Symeon explains, the testimony of a mother would invite suspicion.

The account of Mary's leadership in the nascent church that follows in the Georgian Life and (apparently) in John's revision is completely dropped from Symeon's narrative. Symeon quickly moves through the post-resurrection appearances and the ascension, giving only perfunctory notice of Mary's presence in the upper room, as reported in Acts. Then, when the apostles go forth to preach the gospel, Mary stays behind and lives on Mount Zion in the Beloved Disciple's house, where she is held in honor by all.⁸²

Immediately thereafter, Symeon turns to the events of Mary's dormition, which he describes in some detail on the basis of the Maximus Life, and he completes his account with the legend of Galbius and Candidus taken from the same source. The traditions of Mary's involvement in her son's ministry and in the early church are thus completely expunged, reduced to only a few sentences that essentially replicate the minimalist portrait afforded by the New Testament.

Symeon's decision to delete the traditions about Mary's leadership in her son's ministry and in the early church from his Life of the Virgin was no doubt influenced by more than just a concern for brevity. It is surely no coincidence that these two sections of his source text stand in considerable tension with the traditions of New Testament. Other than the wedding at Cana, there is no canonical reference to Mary's participation in her son's ministry, and likewise, excepting Acts' brief reference to Mary in the upper room, the New Testament does not speak of her activity in the early church. The Maximus Life of the Virgin takes considerable liberties in expanding on the biblical narratives and inserting Mary in key roles at various points. While George of Nicomedia and John the Geometrician follow their source in this regard, Symeon has pruned his narrative in these areas to reflect more conservatively the rather limited canonical portrait of Mary. Perhaps for much the same reason Symeon's life also largely omits the traditions of Mary's conception, birth, and childhood that its source had taken from the Protevangelium of James. Symeon mentions only very briefly Mary's childhood in the temple and Joseph's subsequent guardianship, and even these relatively minor (and presumably non-controversial) points are carefully placed under the authority of Gregory of Nyssa, who is quoted from his homily on the nativity as relating these traditions that he has “heard from some apocryphal history.”⁸³

Symeon's apparent reluctance to reproduce the traditions of the Protevangelium is rather surprising, particularly given that the Protevangelium attained a quasi-canonical status in the East. He does not hesitate to reproduce material from the dormition apocrypha, and his double standard in this regard is somewhat curious. Symeon also freely incorporates the extrabiblical traditions of Mary's role in her son's burial and resurrection, but perhaps George of Nicomedia's homilies on these subjects had already established an authoritative precedent for their inclusion. Nevertheless, Symeon's Life of the Virgin certainly manifests a radically different attitude toward apocryphal literature from the Maximus Life, whose author explains that he freely drew “some things from apocryphal writings, namely, that which is true and without error and which has been accepted and confirmed by the … holy fathers.”⁸⁴

Symeon's censorship of these extracanonical traditions ultimately ensured that this late antique tradition of Mary's central role in the ministry of her son and in the early church was not widely known during the second Christian millennium. Nevertheless, it appears that this image of Mary as a leader in formative Christianity endured on Mount Athos and in the monastic communities of Palestine, as the Georgian manuscript tradition of the Maximus Life attests.⁸⁵

Furthermore, the traditions of Mary's special role in her son's passion and resurrection became widely disseminated through Symeon's popular Life as well as George of Nicomedia's homilies, which quickly became popular liturgical readings for Holy Week in Byzantine monasteries.⁸⁶ Although it seems that George's homilies were originally composed for delivery to a lay congregation in Constantinople,⁸⁷ already by the tenth century his homily for Holy Friday began to find its way into the monastic liturgies, including the influential typikon of the Evergetes monastery in Constantinople.⁸⁸ This transition to a monastic context confirms an interesting pattern in regards to the setting of these traditions: excepting only the original setting for George of Nicomedia's homilies on the passion, this image of Mary as central to her son's mission and the early church appears to have been limited primarily to monastic circles. Even the Maximus Life of the Virgin, if authentic, was most likely composed early in his life, when he was living in a monastery either in or near Constantinople, and it was on Mount Athos that Euthymius translated the Life from Greek into Georgian in the latter part of the tenth century.⁸⁹ John the Geometrician wrote his Life of the Virgin around this same time, most likely in the monastery to which he had retired following his military career.

This certainly raises an intriguing question about the Sitz im Leben of these traditions and their transmission: why were these narratives, with their strong emphasis on the leadership of Mary and other women in formative Christianity, particularly popular in all-male monastic circles? One might not expect to find such traditions favored in an environment as traditionally unwelcoming to women as Mount Athos. Yet perhaps herein lies the very reason why these representations of women's leadership were able to thrive in this milieu: the absence of actual women may have made this representation considerably less threatening than it would have been in a mixed, urban setting. Women could be represented as central to the origins of Christianity in an all-male monastic context precisely because there was no danger of these traditions setting a precedent for any real women to claim authority within the contemporary church. In a parish setting, however, such tales of Mary and the other women who followed Jesus could inspire women to identify in these biblical women a precedent for their own leadership within the church. It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that a lay person, Symeon, who wrote within a more “secular” setting, expunged these traditions from his Life of the Virgin. It may be that the presence of real women in his community made Symeon keenly aware of the potentially subversive nature of these traditions, in ways that might not have been so obvious to those living in an all-male monastic community. Yet, it is not without irony that Symeon's Life, perhaps the only one composed in a secular milieu, ultimately came to predominate in the monasteries, pushing out the earlier, more gender inclusive traditions of his source. As a result, this image of Mary did not circulate as broadly as it might have, and during the second Christian millennium, it appears to have been limited primarily to Georgian monastic circles. Only the traditions of Mary's central role in the events of the passion and her status as the sole witness to the resurrection were more widely known, thanks to the liturgical usage of George's homilies and Symeon's Life.

For whatever reason, this earliest Life of the Virgin did not circulate very widely during the Middle Ages, and thus its remarkable portrait of Mary as a leader in her son's ministry and in the early church did not reach a very wide audience. This narrative would surely have influenced the development of Marian piety in some interesting directions and might even have affected the status of women in Christian communities for the better. It is equally unfortunate that modern scholars of religion in late antiquity and of Mariology have continued to ignore such a fascinating and important text. The time has come for experts on Maximus to consider more earnestly the question of the Life's authorship and, in the interim, for those interested in the history of Marian piety to pay more attention to this highly original and influential early text. The present article has focused on only one specific, albeit important, theme of the Life, but many other avenues remain to be explored. The position of this earliest Life in the history of Marian literature has yet to be fully investigated. In particular, the matter of the Georgian Life's sources and its relation to various precursors in Marian biography await investigation, as do other areas of the Life's possible influence on later Marian literature. One subject that promises to be especially rewarding of further study is the Life's contribution to history of Marian lament; although several recent studies have examined the early traditions of Mary's grief at the cross, they all completely overlook the importance of this primitive Life.⁹⁰

But many other areas also will certainly reward exploration. The Maximus Life of the Virgin represents a major watershed in the history of Marian literature. It gathers together the Marian traditions of antiquity and moulds them into a comprehensive biography of the Virgin that subsequently served as the template for numerous compositions of the early Middle Ages, as we have just seen. Such a central text is certainly deserving of more concerted study.