On Nov. 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII solemnly proclaimed as a divinely revealed truth
that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, on the completion of
her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven."
By the fifth century, August fifteenth was kept at Jerusalem as the
Commemoration of the Mother of God.
In the sixth century the feast of Mary's Falling Asleep spread throughout the
East.
Finally in the eighth century the day was celebrated as the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin Mary.
Before the Council of Ephesus there had been one
liturgical feast of Mary, the feast of the
Purification, and that was celebrated only in certain
parts of the Eastern Church. But after Ephesus the
feasts began to multiply.
From the beginning of the sixth
century various churches celebrated Mary's bodily
assumption into heaven.
The belief originated not from
biblical evidence nor even patristic testimony, but as the
conclusion of a so-called argument from convenience or
fittingness. !!!!!
It was "fitting" that Jesus should have
rescued his mother from the corruption of the flesh, and
so he "must have" taken her bodily into heaven. By the
middle of the seventh century four separate Marian feasts
were observed in Rome: the Annunciation, the Purification,
the Assumption, and the Nativity of Mary.
At the end of
this century the feast of the Conception of Mary began in
the East, but it remained unknown in the West until the
eleventh century. Andrew of Crete (d. 740) wrote a hymn
to Mary, calling her "alone wholly without stain."
To Western ears this riieant conceived without sin (the
Immaculate Conception), but to Eastern ears, which had a
different understanding of Original Sin, it meant only
freedom from mortality and general human weakness.
- p.873, "Catholicism," McBrien, 2nd ed, Harper and Row,
(1981).
OTHER WRITINGS:
There is a writing called the, "Dormitio Virginis" which implies that Mary died
at Jerusalem about 48 AD. Though this testimony is far from certain, it is more
plausible than the rival legend that the Blessed Virgin accompanied St. John to
Ephesus and died there after 67.
Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem in the fifth century, informed Empress St.
Pulcheria that Mary had died at Jerusalem in the presence of all the apostles
save Thomas. She had been buried in Gethsemane, but when her tomb was opened
three days later for Thomas's benefit, it was found empty. From this and
certain miraculous signs the apostles concluded to Mary's assumption.
ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE:
Near the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem
132. The Tomb of the Virgin
As for the Tomb of Mary the following explanation may be
given.
When Theodosius [a pilgrim who left a detailed itinerary
from 530 AD] describes the Valley of Jehoshaphat he says
that it is where Judas betrayed the Lord and also that
there is there a church of St. Mary the mother of the Lord
(ecclesia domnae Mariae matris Domini).
The Anonymous of Piacenza [an Italian pilrim from 570 AD]
came down the Mount of Olives into the Valley of
Gethsemane, saw the place where the Lord was betrayed, and
found in the same valley "a basilica of St. Mary which,
they say, was her house in which she was taken from the
body."
Yet another source of the sixth century, the Jerusalem
Breviary also mentions her sepulcher in connection with
the basilica of St. Mary.
Arculf [A Frankish bishop and pilgrim 670 AD] describes
the Church of St. Mary in the Valley of Josaphat as built
in two stories, both round, in the lower of which is
"the'empty sepulcher of St. Mary in which for a time she
rested after her burial."
According to these references the church, with these
traditions attaching to it, existed in the sixth and
seventh centuries and must have been built earlier,
perhaps in the fifth century.
This earlier Byzantine church was in ruins when the
Crusaders came. They not only rebuilt the church but also
built beside it a large monastery, the Abbey of St. Mary
of the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
The digging of trenches in this area in 1937 uncovered
some mosaic floors and an inscription with crosses,
reading "Tomb of Kasios and Adios," probably sixth century
in date, and also later pavements and masonry of the time
of the Crusader reconstruction of the church.
The present church...is known as the Church of the Tomb of
Mary or, simply, the Tomb of the Virgin. In it the
underground crypt is still that of the church of the Abbey
of St. Mary.
- 106-107, "The Archeology of the New Testament," Jack
Finegan, Princeton Univ Press, (1969).
