Transitus Mariae

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Passage of Our Lady, tapestry in the parish church of Notre-Dame (Beaune)

The Transitus Mariae (Liber qui appellatur Transitus sanctae Mariae apocryphus) is a group of early Christian legendary writings about the death of the Mother of God Mary and her bodily acceptance into heaven . They are mostly counted among the more recent Apocrypha of the New Testament , but also have elements of hymnography , hagiography and homily literature .

history

The dating of the group of works is controversial. Traditionally, the original script is dated between the 4th and 6th centuries; thus it could have arisen in connection with and as a result of the dogmatic disputes of the first councils. Some scholars, however, date the work in its first versions to the 2nd / 3rd centuries. Century. In the introduction to his Transitus Mariae , for example, a pseudo- Melito writes that Leucius , a student of the Apostle John , had already written such a text. This claim is very controversial, among other things because the later author, who posed as Melito, tried to date his own writing to the time of John, although Melito did not live until the later 2nd century.

Reception and content

The Transitus Mariae writings have recently been analyzed several times. Today we know about 20 versions of the Transitus Mariae , some of which vary greatly and hardly allow a reconstruction of the "original version" of the script.

All variants have the following contents in common: An angel appears to Mary, hands her a victory palm and brings her the message of her impending death in three days. Mary then goes to the Mount of Olives and recognizes God himself in the angel. She then returns home, prays and informs those around her that she is about to die. While the apostle John is being informed by Mary herself of the angelic apparition and the death message, the other apostles, including Paul , are miraculously brought to Jerusalem. Since Peter does not know the reason for this transfer, he prays. John steps out of the house of Mary and tells Peter and the other apostles about the impending death of the mother Jesus. On the morning of the second day the apostles go into the house where Mary is and greet the Blessed Mother. In the evening of the day, Peter preaches a sermon. On the third day, Mary went outside the house in Jerusalem and offered one last prayer. At the third hour (around 9 a.m.) Christ appears with angels. Maria thanks her son and dies. Jesus instructs Peter to bury Mary in a new tomb. The funeral procession of Mary is disturbed by high priests who want to burn the body of the mother of Jesus and kill the apostles. As a punishment for their crime, the priests are beaten with blindness and the funeral can take place. After Mary lay in the grave for three days, Christ reappears at her grave and angels spend the body of the Mother of God in Paradise . Maria's body is reunited with her soul under the heavenly tree of life . Christ and his apostles, who were ascended to paradise for this purpose, are present. Jesus then sends his disciples back to their mission areas.

In the details of the various text variants, however, there are major differences, which among other things reflect different dogmatic backgrounds and views. For example, some texts only deal with a natural death of Mary, while others also contain her actual transitus , i.e. the bodily acceptance into heaven. The value of the Transitus Mariae literature as a historical source for Mary's death is therefore rather small overall. The Transitus Mariae, however, is of particular importance as a witness to the veneration of Mary in the time the texts were written and to the later Christian iconography of the ' death of Mary or her death '. In addition, the Transitus Mariae reports have become particularly significant for the dogma of the bodily acceptance of Mary into heaven by the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus in 1950.

The time of creation of the individual versions and their relationships to one another are given very inconsistently. Among other things, the view was expressed that a Greek manuscript in the Vatican Library should come closest to the original.

See also

expenditure

  • Apocrypha Syriaca. The Protevangelium Jacobi and Transitus Mariae. Edited and translated by Agnes Smith Lewis (= Studia Sinaitica. Number 11). CJ Clay & Sons, London 1902 (English translation of a version from p. 12; online ).
  • Victor Arras (ed.): De Transitu Mariae apocrypha Aethiopice (= Corpus scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Volumes 342–343 and 351–352. / Scriptores Aethiopici. Volumes 66–69). Secrét. du Corpus SCO, Louvain 1973-1974.
  • Christa Müller-Kessler: Three Early Witnesses of the "Dormition of Mary" in Christian Palestinian Aramaic. Palimpsests from the Cairo Genizah (Taylor-Tchechter Collection) and the New Finds in St Catherine's Monastery. In: Apocrypha. Volume 29, 2018, pp. 69-95.
  • Christa Müller-Kessler: An Overlooked Christian Palestinian Aramaic Witness of the Dormition of Mary in Codex Climaci Rescriptus (CCR IV). In: Collectanea Christiana Orientalia. Volume 16, 2019, pp. 81-98.
  • Christa Müller-Kessler: Obsequies of My Lady Mary (I): Unpublished Early Syriac Palimpsest Fragments from the British Library (BL, Add 17.137, no.2). In: Hugoye. Volume 23, Number 1, 2020, pp. 31-59.

literature

  • Johann Baptist Bauer: Liber Transitus s. Mariae, in: Marienlexikon, ed. on behalf of the Institutum Marianum Regensburg eV by Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheffczyk, Volume 4, St. Ottilien 1992, pp. 115–116.
  • Hans Förster: The Transitus Mariae . In: Christoph Markschies , Jens Schröter (Hrsg.): Ancient Christian Apocrypha in German translation. 7th edition, Volume I: Gospels and related matters. Part 1, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-16-149951-7 , pp. 299–307 (introduction pp. 299–301).
  • Hans Förster (Ed.): Transitus Mariae. Contributions to the Coptic tradition. With an edition by P. Vindob. K 7589, Cambridge Add 1876 8 and Paris BN Copte 129 17 f. 28 and 29 (= The Greek Christian Writers of the First Centuries. New Series, Volume 14 / New Testament Apocrypha. Volume II). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, ISBN 978-3-11-018227-9 .
  • Simon Claude Mimouni: Dormition et assomption de Marie. Histoire des traditions anciennes (= Théologie historique. Volume 98). Beauchesne, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-7010-1320-8 .
  • Ferdinand Rupert Prostmeier: Transitus Mariae reports, in: Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Volume 10, 3rd, completely revised edition, ed. by Walter Kasper u. a., pp. 168-169.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Latin title based on the Decretum Gelasianum , TU 38/4, 53.
  2. ^ Johann Baptist Bauer: Liber Transitus s. Mariae, in: Marienlexikon, ed. on behalf of the Institutum Marianum Regensburg eV by Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheffczyk, Volume 4, St. Ottilien 1992, pp. 115–116.
  3. ^ Ferdinand Rupert Prostmeier: Transitus Mariae reports, in: Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Volume 10, 3rd, completely revised edition, ed. by Walter Kasper u. a., pp. 168-169.