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Mary CLAYTON,

UniversityCollegeDublin

THE TRANSITUS MARIAE :

THE TRADITION AND ITS ORIGINS

This article discussesecent attempts o classify he early ransi-

tus texts and to determine vhich group of texts s the earliest. The

Syriac Obsequies,which belongs o the same extual amily as the

Greek R and related texts, J of crucial importancehere. This am-

ily emphasized Mary's fear of death and described her assump-

tion to a paradise separate rom heaven, where her body was

placed under the tree of life and the soul replaced,.a descensus

followed, describing he visit of Mary and the apostles o hell and,

perhaps, heaven. The development of the tradition is traced

through R, the Latin textsand the Old English narratives.

Cet article met en question es classifications ecentes es ransi-

tus ancienspour determinerquel groupe en est e plus ancien. Les

Obseques syriaques, qui font part de la meme amille textuelle

que le R grec et les textesq li y appartiennent,sont d'une impor-

tance essentielle.Cette amille a mis l'accent sur la peur de Marie

face a sa mort et a decrit son assomptiona un paradis pas iden-

tique au Ciel, oil son corps a ete pose sous l'arbre de vie et son

ame y reposee.Un descens.us suivi qui decrit la visite de Marie

et des apotres aux enfers t t peut-etre, au Ciel. L' objectif est de

tracer le developpementde1117radition a traversR, les textes atins

et vieil-anglais.

The transitusTexts: Attempts at Classification

Recent work on the apocryphal transitus texts has tended to

focus on determining what the origins of the tradition are and on

attempts to classify he numerous texts, either into textual fami-

lies or according o a chronological development. Two radically

different categorisations of the transitus exts have been put for-

1. The recent Clauis Apocryphorum Noui Testamenti, d. M. GEERARD

(Tumhout, 1992),pp. 74-95, i$ts sixty-four different apocrypha in diffe-

rent languages and summarims six different attempts at classification

according to chronological development (ibid., pp. 74-7).

Apocrypha 10, 1999, p. 74 -98

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HE TRANSrruS MARIAE

ward by Michel Van Esbroeck2 and Simon Mimouni.3 Van

Esbroeck divides the narratives into two textual families, the

Palm from the Tree of Life and Bethlehem and the Burning of

Incense . In the former group the palm is brought to Mary from

paradise at the beginning of the narrative and it plays a major

role throughout. In most versions of this family Mary s body is

placed in paradise under the tree of life, from which the palm

was taken, at the conclusion. The earliest representative of this

family is the fragmentary Syriac Obsequies;4 o it also belong

such Greek texts as Wenger sR,5 John of Thessalonicaand most

of the other Greek texts, almost all of the Latin, the Old Irish

text, the Coptic texts (which hold a place slightly apart from the

others) and the Ethiopic Liber Requiei,6 an immensely impor-

tant text as it agrees almoSIi word for word with the Syriac

Obsequieswhere both texts overlap. The Bethlehem family is

characterized by Mary s journley from Jerusalem o Bethlehem,

the arrival of the apostles in Bethlehem and their journey with

Mary back to Jerusalem, wbere she dies, and by the constant

burning of incense. To this family belong the Syriac Six Books7

and the Five Books8 and the Greek Pseudo-John,9as well as

2. Les textes litteraires sur I Assomption avant Ie xesiecle in Les Actes

apocryphesdes Apotres.. Christianismeet monde paien, ed. F, BOVON t

al. (Geneva, 1981), pp. 265-85; reprinted in Aux origines de la

Dormition de la Vierge..Etudes historiques sur les traditions orientales,

Variorum Collected Studies Seri~s472 (Aldershot, 1995)

3. Dormition et Assomption de Marie.. Histoire des Traditions anciennes,

Theologie Historique 98 (Paris, 1995),pp. 55-73.

4. W. WRIGHT,ed., Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of the

New Testament,collected and Eidited rom Syriac manuscripts in the

British Museum (London, 1865),pp. 42-51. Other, briefer, fragments are

transcribed in the introduction to the same volume, pp. 10-16.Parts of

the text not translated by Wright are translated and discussed by A.

WENGER, assomption de la tres SainteVierge dans a tradition byzanti-

ne du vie au x siecle,Archives de l Orient chretien 5 (Paris, 1955).

5. WENGER, assomption,pp. 210-41.

6. V. ARRAS, ed., De Transitu Mariae Apocrypha IEthiopice, Corpus

Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 342 and 343 (Louvain, 1973).

7. W. WRIGHT,The Departure of my Lady Mary from this World , The

Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record 6 (1865),417-448; 7

(1865), 108-60.

8. A. SMITH-LEWIS,d., Apocrypha Syriaca. The ProteuangeliumJacobi

and Transitus Mariae, Studia Sinaitica 11 (London and Cambridge,

1902,pp. 12-69 (English translation).

9. C. TISCHENDORF,d., Apocalypses Apocryphae (Leipzig, 1866), pp.

95-112.

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M.CLAYTON

related works in Latin, Arabic, Georgian and Ethiopic. Van

Esbroeck does not explicitly discuss the question of which of

these families is prior, but says in passing hat the fact that the

Bethlehem family has resulted in almost nothing in Latin is a

sign of its late flowering.1oMimouni, on the other hand, classifies

the apocrypha into three groups according to two main criteria,

one topological and the other doctrinal. His groups are (A) all of

the Syriac texts and the Greek Pseudo-John, which, he says,

localize the house of Mary in Bethlehem and attest to belief in

the dormition only; (B) the Coptic texts and texts dependent on

them, which place Mary s house in Jerusalemand attest to belief

in the dormition or in the dormition and assumption; and (C)

the other Greek and Latin texts, which place Mary s house in

Jerusalemand attest to belief in the assumption, with or without

a resurrection. This typology is a developmental one and

Mimouni therefore postulates a development from an early

stage in which the texts attest to belief in the dormition to a

belief in Mary s assumption in the later stagesof the tradition.

By dormition he means the death of Mary, with her soul being

taken to heaven and her body somewhere else, known or

unknown, whereas by assumptionhe means the transfer of soul

and body to heaven, either separately or together, the resurrec-

tion (or sometimes not) of Mary s body, and their lasting reunion

in those texts where they have been separated.l1These two clas-

sifications are clearly very different and in this article I should

like to reexamine them and to look at the question of what the

texts imply about Mary s final fate.

The Syriac Obsequies

One crucial difference between Van Esbroeck and Mimouni is

the group to which they assign he Syriac Obsequies,which, they

both agree, is the earliest surviving text in the entire tradition;

this has fundamental repelrcussionsor their view of the develop-

ment of the apocryphal tradition. The Obsequies, hough frag-

mentary, is clearly a palm narrative, as the Jew who attacks

Mary s bier touches it where the palm was and then heals the

blinded Jews by means ot the palm. At the end of the narrative

Christ, the angels and the apostles accompanyMary s body on

clouds to paradise, where the body is placed under the tree of

life and the soul is replaeed. The angels are then sent back to

10. Les textes litteraires , p. 270.

11. On these terms, see Mimouni, Dormition, pp. 7-21

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HE TRANSITUS MARIAE

their places and Mary and the apostles are taken on a cloud to

the West, where they are shown the souls in torment in hell. As

a palm narrative, Van Esbroeck groups the Obsequieswith the

other palm texts. Mimouni, however, instead groups the

Obsequies with the other Sy[iac texts (the Six Books and the

Five Books) and the Greek P:~eudo-John, n the grounds that it

is a dormition rather than all assumption story and that it pre-

sumably would have placed the death of Mary in Bethlehem, not

Jerusalem (the text as we now have it does not specify a loca-

tion).12His argument does not seem o be supported by the text,

however. The Obsequieshas generally been regarded as a wit-

ness o Mary s resurrection and assumption,13 s it describes he

placing of her soul back into her body under the tree of life

(where the soul has been in the interim is not specified, either

here or in the closest parallels). Both Cothenet and Mimouni

argue that this is not the case.14 y comparing this Syriac text

with the other Syriac witnesses, hey deduce that the reuniting of

body and soul is merely a temporary one, to allow Mary to wit-

ness the torments of hell with the apostles. According to them,

the other Syriac versions of the story, without the breaks which

the fragmentary nature of this text impose, show that, once the

tour of hell is over, Mary s body is placed back under the tree of

life in paradise, to await the general resurrection on the Last

Day, while her soul is taken to dwell with God. Her resurrection

is, then, according to Cothenet and Mimouni, a provisional one,

not the permanent resurrection of a reunited body and soul, and

they accordingly classify the text as a dormition rather than an

assumption ext. The main evidence which they quote for this is

the Syriac Six Books, as the other two Syriac texts in question

are also fragmentary, but it is highly questionable whether this is

actually what the Six Books contain: they never specify a sepa-

rate fate for Mary s soul when she is returned to paradise}5 It is

12. Ibid., pp. 78-86.

13. See, or example, Wenger, L R5somption, p. 62-3.

14. E. COTHENET,Marie dans les apocryphes in Maria, ed. H. DU

MANOIR, VI (Paris, 1961), pp. 71-156, at 124-6, and MIMOUNI,

Dormition, pp. 81-6.

15. In the Syriac Six Books Mary dies and Christ sends her soul to the

mansions of the Father s house , The apostles hen bear Mary on a cha-

riot of light to the paradise of Eden . Christ comes o Mary in paradise

and restores her to life in order to see paradise, heavenand hell, before

bringing her back to the paradise of Eden . There is no further mention

of a separation of body and soul ~fter the otherworldly tour is completed.

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M.CLAYTON

true that in the related Greek Pseudo-JohnMary s body is pre-

served incorrupt in paradise, while her soul is in heaven (and

this text is therefore a dormition narrative), but this is not what

we find in the Syriac Six Books.

As well as misrepresenting the Six Books in this way,

Cothenet and Mimouni, in classifying all of the Syriac texts

together, also do not give sufficient weight to the important dif-

ferences between the Obst quiesand the other Syriac texts, all of

which belong to the Bethlehem and the Burning of Incense

family, and to the similarities between the Obsequiesand the

Ethiopic and Old Irish texts. Even though the Obsequies ext is

fragmentary, some of the gaps n its narrative can be supplied by

a comparison with texts which are closely related to it, especially

by the Ethiopic Liber Requiei and the Old Irish transitus,16

which clearly also belong to the same textual tradition and con-

tain a very similar account of events. ? Unlike all of the other

Syriac texts, the Obsequieshas the dispute among the apostles,

almost exactly as in the Ethiopic and the Old Irish, as well as the

stories about the bones of Josephand the trees dropping worms,

both also in the Ethiopic, The apostolic dispute is particularly

important because races of it survive in Greek and Latin texts

and this, together with other similarities to the Obsequies,

enables us to establish important textual connections between

this text and most of the Greek and Latin ones.The Obsequiess

also the only one of the Syriac narratives to have the palm, as in

the source of the Ethiopic and in the Old Irish, again associating

it with most of the Greek and Latin texts. It is probable that the

Her soul may in fact have been in paradise from the moment. of her

death, as the text does not specify whether its destination s paradise or

heaven; the mansions of the Father s house described later in the text

are in the paradise of Eden , suggesting that her soul and body had

been brought separately o paradise to be reunited there.

16. The Old Irish text is extant in two manuscripts, both from the fif-

teenth century, but preserving a much older text. The version in

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 610 is edited by C. DONAHUE,

The Testament of Mary: The Gaelic Version of the Dormitio Mariae

together with an Irish Latin Version (New York, 1942),and M. HERBERT

and M. McNAMARA, eds., Irish Biblical Apocrypha: SelectedTexts n

Translation (Edinburgh, 1989),pp. 119-31, ranslate the Irish text based

on the Liber Flauus Fergusiorum,Dublin, Royal Irish Academy,23 a 48.

17. ARRAS, De transitu, II, vi, says that the Obsequies uerbum ad

uerbum, saluis quibusdam uariantibus, textui nostro consonant.

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IE TRANSITUS MARIAE

Obsequieswas unique among the Syriac narratives also because

it stressedMary's fear of death: this is not a feature of the extant

fragments, it is true, but it is of passagesn the Ethiopic and Old

Irish which are not paralleled in what remains of the Syriac

text}8 The passageon the bones of Joseph, extant in Syriac as a

fragment out of context, in the Ethiopic text is part of a reassur-

ance to Mary that she need not fear death19and this is more

than likely its original context in Syriac too. The palm itself,

indeed, is proof of the presenceof this fear in the text, as it func-

tions in all the transitus apocrypha in which it features as a sym-

bol of victory, reassuring Mary that the evil spirits which she

fears will be vanquished. Had Mary had no fear of death in the

Obsequies, there would have been no need for the palm.

Cothenet's explanation of its role in the Transitus of Pseudo-

Melito holds true for the other texts also: he says that it is a

18. The Ethiopic Liber Requiei gives a passage virtually unknown

elsewhere, which furnishes an e~lanation of why Mary was afraid of

death. This refers back to an episode on the flight into Egypt when

Mary lacked faith and regarded herself as having sinned: 'Et propter

istud ego quoque tirneo, quia noll credidi domino meo, una prorsus die,

ecce ego dico uobis quoad peccatum quando fugirnus, ego et Josephet

duo filii eius, factus est stupor super me et audiui uocem pueri post me

dicentem: ne fleas et ne ulules uidetis et non uidetis, auditis et non

auditis. Et his dictis, uerti me re~rorsum ut uiderem quis loculus esset

mecum; et tunc reuersus fuit et ncsciui quo abiuerat. Et dixi ad Joseph:

Eamus ex hoc loco, quoniam uidi ego puerum qui e saeculo. Et quando

uidi hoc tunc apparuit mihi et inueni quod fili~s meus erat et dixit mihi :

Maria, mater mea, imputatum est omne peccatum, quia gustasti ama-

rum sicut dulce. Non credidi, fratres mei, quod tantam gloriam inueni-

rem; quando enirn descendi,omnino nesciui menstrua mulierum et non

propter eum; nunc autem ntelle:ti; et hoc factum est omne et dixit mihi

omnia et narrauit mihi inde quod potestas eius erat in uia ipsius, et

omnis anima sperat et iustorum et peccatorum. Et haec dicens Maria,

uocauit cognatos suos et dixit eis: Surgite et orate. Et cum orauissent,

sederunt et inceperunt loqui intc.r se magnitudinem Christi qui fecerat

signa.' (De transitu,ed. Arras, U, 16) This must surely be a very early

episode, dating from before the period when Mary's sinlessness ould

be taken for granted, and later versions, ncluding R, presumably omit-

ted it because t offended the sensibilities of their redactors. The only

other reference to this is in a Goorgian apocryphon which contains only

the beginning of an allusion to it: see M. VAN ESBROECK,Apocryphes

georgiens de la Dormition', Analecta Bollandiana 91 (1973),55-75,at 58

and 65.

19. See F. MANNS, e recit de la dormition de Marie (Vaticangrec 1982):

Contribution a I'etude des origines de I'exegese chretienne, Studium

Biblicum Franciscanum,Collecti~ Maior 33 (Jerusalem,1989),p. 77.

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M.CLAYTON

token of victory, which guarantees o Mary the assistanceof the

angelic armies at the time of her meeting with Satan and which

plays a prophylactic role against he evil spirits.z°The Obsequies,

therefore, was probably utlique among he surviving Syriac texts

in not sharing their view of the serene nature of the Virgin s atti-

tude towards death, but instead emphasising her fear. Another

important difference between the Obsequies and the other

Syriac texts is that in the other texts Mary has a house in

Bethlehem, as well as on~ in Jerusalem: there is no localisation

of the house in the Obsel/uies,as the beginning of the text is

missing, but in the Ethiopic, the Old Irish text and the Greek R

Mary s house seems o be located in Jerusalem as she ascends

the Mount of Olives after the first announcement of her immi-

nent death and all the trees adore the palm (Ethiopic: book) she

holds and in the Ethiopic and in R the Christ-angel who appears

to Mary at the beginning tells her that his name cannot be

uttered in the middle of Jerusalem. It seemsprobable that the

Obsequies was set apart from the other Syriac texts in this

respect also, therefore, locating Mary s house in Jerusalem, with

no trace of a dwelling in Bethlehem. To class~ the Obsequies n

the same group as the other Syriac texts is therefore fundamen-

tally flawed and leads to misreadings of the texts. Van

Esbroeck s classification, which assigns he Obsequieso a differ-

ent family than all the other Syriac texts, is, then, in accordance

with the contents of the narratives.

Since the Obsequiess different in very basic ways to the other

Syriac texts, the missing part of its ending almost certainly had

more in common with the closely related Ethiopic and Old Irish

parallels. The Ethiopic Liber Requiei describes Mary s body

being placed under the tree of life in paradise, where her soul is

reunited with it, in terms almost identical to the Syriac: Et cum

peruenissent simul in paradisum, posuerunt corpus Mariae apud

aroorem uitae. Et attulerunt animam eius et posuerunt super

corpus eius. 21This is followed by the visit to hell and heaven

with the apostles (the extant part of the Obsequies nds with the

visit to hell), after which: Et attulerunt alium thronum pro

Maria et erant circa illam decem millia angelorum et tres uir-

gines. Et sedit ilIa et iuit in paradisum et in tertio coelo steterunt

ibi dum cantabant. 22 he third heaven, herefore, is paradise (cf.

II Cor. XII. 2-4), not identical with the seventhheaven, of which

20. Marie dans es apocryphes ,. 139.

21. Arras, De transitu,I, 35.

22. Ibid.,pp. 53-4.

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81E TRANSITUS MARIAE

Mary and the apostles had been given a foretaste earlier in the

narrative. In the Old Irish transitus,Mary s soul is also put back

into her body under the tree of life in paradise and she visits hell

(only) with the apostles, but, once hell is closed: The Virgin

Mary was then brought under the tree of life in paradise and the

Saviour and Michael rose to heaven after raising Mary nobly

under the tree of life with the host of God about her praising the

Saviour... , or, in the Liber Flauus version: The body of Mary

was placed under the tree of life in paradise and there was a host

of God about her praising the Lord for ever. 23 he two Old Irish

manuscripts do not separate Mary s body and soul again, just as

the Ethiopic does not, but body and soul seem to be returned

together to a paradise which is not identical to heaven. Both

Ethiopic and Old Irish texts, then, suggest hat the missing end

of the Syriac Obsequieswould have described Mary s body and

soul being placed back under the tree of life, and that it was an

assumption text, that assumption being to paradise or the third

heaven, a place separate from the heaven n which God resides.

It seems o me, therefore, that the earliest apocryphal texts are

assumption texts and that the dormltion, as we find it in the

Pseudo-John, s a secondary development. This assumption is

not, however, to heaven, as in the 1950 definition, but to a par-

adise separate rom heaven.

The Bethlehem family in ge;neralwould seem o be later than

the palm texts, drawing on them but rewriting them in several

respects.The journey to and from Bethlehem in these narratives

seems to be a secondary development, as the introduction of

that town, with the clumsinessof the journey to and fro, smacks

of a later attempt to gain a place for it, even though the tradition

of death in Jerusalemwas clearly already too strong to alter. The

emphasis on Mary s serenity i1IIhe Bethlehem family also points

to a desire to correct the Obsequies radition by replacing Mary s

fear with a desire to be reunited with her son; the fear would

seem to be the more primitive tradition, later rewritten into a

mystical desire for death.

Instead, then, of forming part of Mimouni s A group of texts,

characterized by Mary s house in Bethlehem and by a belief in

the dormition rather than the assumption, the Obsequies, I

would argue, is set in Jerusalemand attests to a belief in Mary s

assumption to paradise, where body and soul are preserved

together under the tree of life. From the very beginning, this tex-

23. DONAHUE, he Testamentof Mary, p. 55.

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M.CLAYfON

tual family, the more priIJl1itiveof the two families, emphasized

Mary s fear of death. The visit of Mary and the apostles o hell

was certainly also original, as it is found in the Obsequies, he

Ethiopic, the Old Irish a:ttlldhe Irish Latin text, and there are

traces of it in Latin alsO.24t is found also in the Bethlehem fami-

ly.

The Greek R

The earliest Greek text R belongs to the same amily; its origi-

nal title, according o Wel1ger,s found, not in the unique manu-

script, but in some manuscripts of John of Thessalonica shomily,

a text which draws on the same source as R: This is the book

about the repose of Mary, the holy mother of God, along with

that which was revealed to her, in five chapters. 25The same

manuscripts attribute the work to James, the brother of Jesus

and bishop of Jerusalem. .It seems o me more likely, however,

that this was the title of the common source of R and John of

Thessalonica, as R itself has no trace of a five-book structure,

and no section devoted to a visit by Mary to hell and/ or heaven,

which is presumably what. he what was revealed to her refers

to. Wenger and Mimouni~6 both connect this title to the Syriac

Five Books, even though 1he Greek texts have little in common

with the Five Books. Instead I believe that it should be connect-

ed with the Ethiopic Liber Requiei, whose title in one of the two

manuscripts reads, in Latin translation, In nomine Patris et Filii

et Spiritus Sancti. Liber Requiei Mariae qui de ea reuelatus est

in quinque libris et in quinque coelis. 27This text is, as already

mentioned, very close to what is extant of the Syriac Obsequies

(which may, of course, also have been in five books, as it certain-

ly deals with Mary s repose and with what was revealed to her)

and R clearly belongs to the same textual family. In the Ethiopic

the five books deal with (1) the announcement o Mary by the

angel of her death in thre~ days time and the bringing of a book

(the Ethiopic translator, who was probably translating from

Greek, may have confused Greek bib/ion, book, and brabeion,

the sign of victory or palm) ;28Mary goes to the Mount of

Olives; there is a long excursus on the palm and the Flight into

24. See below, p. 88.

25. WENGER, assomption,p. 33.

26. Dormition, p. 143.

27. Arras, De transitu 11,1.

28. SeeM. ERBE1TA, li Ap~rifi del Nuovo Testamento, 2 (Thrin, 1981),

p. 423,n. 2. The word brabeion s alwaysused of the palm in the Greek R.

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E TRANSITUS MARIAE

Egypt; (2) Mary s prayer; the arrival of John and of the other

apt>stles; he death and burial of Mary, with the episode of the

Jew who wished to overturn the bier; (3) the apostolic contro-

versy at the tomb of Mary; (4) the body of Mary is brought to

paradise, placed under the tree of life and the soul is replaced;

Mary and the apostles visit hell and heaven with Jesus; Paul is

taken by Jesus to be shown the glorious mysteries, but he has

first to fight the devil in Rome with the aid of Peter; (5) the con-

clusion to the Paul and Peter story; their return to paradise; the

apostles and Mary visit the seventh heaven; a throne is brought

for Mary and placed in the third heaven; Michael returns the

apostles to the Mount of Olives. R corresponds closely to the

first two of these books and the~ has an allusion which suggests

that its source contained the equivalent of the third book,

though it has omitted the apostolic controversy; its account of

the bringing of the body to paradise and the replacing of the soul

is almost identical to the same episode in the Syriac and in the

Ethiopic fourth book. Wenger in fact points out that the rela-

tionship between Syriac and Greek is so close at this point that

the Syriac allows us to correct corrupt readings in the Greek.z9R

has nothing corresponding to the visit to hell and heaven or the

Paul and Peter story, but if the title of R s source was that which

Wenger suggests, hen it seemsprobable that that source had a

visit to the Otherworld also (otherwise why the that which was

revealed to her ?). R, therefore, may well be an abbreviated ver-

sion of a Greek text in five books, translat,d from Syri~c (the

Obsequiesor a text close to it) into Greek or written in Greek

originally and then translated into Syriac to give us the

Obsequies.3O

The abbreviated nature of R is obvious also from some ele-

ments of the text which are clearly remnants of episodes or

details given more fully at an earlier stage of the tradition. One

such element is Mary s request to be brought to the seventh

heaven: this is never described in R, but we have an account of

it in the Ethiopic Liber Requiei, and again it suggests hat R s

source had a tour of the otherworld, with a visit to heaven and

29 WENGER, assomption,p. 61.

30 WENGER,L assomption, p. 58, says: D apres Ie contenu, nous pen-

cherions volontiers pour l anteriorite de Syr sur Ie grec, du moins sous

la forme de R. The attribution to James seemsperhaps more likely to

be of Syriac origin, as in the Syriac Six Books, than Greek, as the more

common Greek attribution is to John the~vangelist.

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M.CLAYTON

perhaps hell. At the end of R Michael takes Mary's body and

places it in paradise, where the apostles,who are also taken on

clouds to paradise, place the body under the tree of life. Michael

then brings Mary's soul, which is replaced in her body, and the

apostles are sent back to the places where they were preaching.

The only difference here between R, on the one hand, and the

Syriac and the Ethiopic, on the other, is that in the Greek it is

the apostles who are sent away, while in the other two texts,

where a visit to hell (Syriac) or to heavenand hell (Ethiopic) fol-

lows, it is the angels who are dismissed,while the apostles and

Mary set out towards the West on clouds. As already mentioned,

I believe that R's source also had such a visit, and the existence

of Latin witnesses to this: (in the thirteenth-century Paris, BN,

lat. 3550,31he 'Irish' Latin version32and the Old Irish version

itself, which almost certainly was translated from a Latin source)

supports this, as the Latin texts are likely to have been translat-

ed from Greek, not Syriac. As R seems o have been intended

for liturgical reading on the feast of the Assumption it is appro-

priate that it should have omitted the visit to hell and perhaps

heaven, imiting itself to the story of Mary's death.

In R the reunited body and soul of Mary seem ust to stay

beneath the tree of life in paradise: Mary remains static under

the tree. Mimouni regards this as a lack of a clear resurrection,

and this, together with (he avoidance of any mention of the

death of Mary in the text, suggests o him a hesitancy about the

assumption and suggests hat the text's redactor may have been

concerned to find a way around ideas offensive to some of his

audience.33t seems o me, however, that R's lack of a clear res-

urrection (if, indeed, this is the correct way to interpret Mary's

immobility) may well be the consequenceof dropping the other-

worldly tour which would have followed in its source and this

suggestionof a possibly aillmostnadvertent lack of a clear resur-

rection is supported by the almost literal agreement between R,

the Syriac Obsequies and the Ethiopic Liber Requiei in their

descriptions of Mary's body being taken to paradise and having

its soul replaced: if the adaptor of R were carefully negotiating

conflicting theological positions with regard to Mary's death, he

31. Though unedited in its entirety, WENGER, 'assomption,pp. 258-9,

gives the apocalypsesection of this manuscript.

32. DONAHUE, d., The Testamento Mary, pp. 67-70.

33. MIMOUNI.Dormition. D. [32. n. 54.

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HE TRAN,SITUSMARIAE

would presumably have had a more individual description. The

avoidance of the vocabulary of death s a feature of the Ethiopic

text also and presumably herefore of R's source.

The Latin Texts

Like R, TransitusA,34 he Latin text closest o R, though not

translated from it, has no otherworldly tour; it does, however,

have a unique reading at the end of the narrative, in which

Mary's body is taken to paradise, along with the apostles, her

soul is replaced in it by the Lord and an unambiguous resurrec-

tion follows: 'Dominus autero accepit animam eius de manu

michaelis archangeli et restituit earn in corpus marie. Exsurgens

autem beata maria a pedibus sills, ambulauit et angeli ymnum

psallebant.'35 his seems o be an independent addition of A, as

there is no other witness to such a scene,and the A redactor was

presumably dissatisfied with its source's ailure to spell out the

completenessof Mary's resunection. Like R and the other texts

in the tradition, A fails to mention the whereabouts of Mary's

soul between death and its reuniting with the body. As in the

earlier texts, Mary is assumed into a paradise separate from

heaven: paradisurn is invariably associatedwith Mary's body in

the text, but Christ is always described as ascending nto cae/urn.

With its full resurrection A goes beyond R's position on the fate

of Mary after death.

Either another Greek text of the same family as A's source or

a Latin translation, whether the complete text which lies behind

Wilmart's manuscript M or a different, lost, text (or texts), seems

to have been the source for two further Latin apocrypha,

34. Ed. WENGER, 'assomption, pp. 245-56. In Wenger's table of texts

he shows Transitus A as desceoding from a prior Latin translation,

which has not survived in its entirety but parts of which have been ente-

red into manuscript M of Transitus W, the thirteenth-century Paris,

Bibliotheque Nationale, lat. 13781,supplementing the text of Transitus

W in this manuscript. The additions in M come from a text which is ful-

ler than that of TransitusA and they are closely related to the Greek R,

often translating R literally but with some elements not paralleled in R

that are clearly primitive. They ,do not, however, agree word for word

with Transitus A, where these two texts overlap; instead they have the

same substance in different words. This means that A probably des-

cends either from a separate translation of a Greek source, the same

Greek source as the full text fr( lm which M's additions were translated

or a different, shorter text, or that it was translated directly from Greek.

35. WENGER,' assomption, . 256.

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M.CLAYTON

Transitus W36 and Transitus B or the Transitus of Pseudo-

Melito.37They do not depend on TransitusA, as they are some-

times fuller than it and preserve some different, primitive

details. Wilmart, without going into the question of sources,sug-

gested that TransitusW was the source behind Pseudo-Melito.38

Capelle, even before Wedlger'sdiscovery and publication of R

and A, argued, however, that John of Thessalonica, TransitusW

and Pseudo-Melito all went back to a common Greek source and

that TransitusW was a translation, abridged for liturgical use, of

this source, while the mOi:t probable hypothesis to explain the

origins of Pseudo-Melito was that it is derived from the complete

Latin text of which Tran~itusW is an abbreviation.39This still

seems to be the best way of explaining the many similarities

between Transitus Wand Pseudo-Melito: that both texts

36. Ed. A.WILMART, L'ancien recit latin de l'Assomption' in Analecta

Reginensia.Extraits des manuscrits atins de a Reine Christine conserves

au Vatican (Vatican, 1933),pp. 323-62,at 323-57.

37. There are two versions ot Transitus B, Bl and B2. There is no criti-

cal edition of Bl, but it has been edited by Tischendorf, Apocalypses

Apocryphae, pp. 124-36, rom a single fourteenth-century manuscript,

and there is another edition in Migne, Patrologia Graeca 5, cols. 1231-

50. There is a critical edition of Transitus B2 by M. Haibach-Reinisch,

Ein neuer 'Transitus Mariae' des Pseudo-Melito, Bibliotheca Assump-

tionis B. Virginis Mariae (Rome, 1962).

38. 'L'ancien recit', p. 323.

39. 'Vestiges grecs et latins d'un antique Transitus de la Vierge ',

Analecta Bollandiana 67 (1949),21-48, at p. 29. MIMOUNI,Dormition,

pp. 63 and 66, suggests hat Pseudo-Melito s the link text between the

three groups of dormition and assumptionnarratives that he distinguis-

hes [A, Band C] and says th~tt t is at the origin of group C, which inclu-

des R and all of the Latin ~xts. Mimouni stresses hat the theme of

Mary's fear of death, which is so prominent in the Coptic texts, is also

developed in Pseudo-Melita'. but, as argued above, this is a general

characteristic of the Obsequi£sl R tradition, and Pseudo-Melito'sdeve-

lopment of it is often exaggerated. Mimouni avoids ever adverting to

the theory advanced by Riviere, Capelle and Wenger that Pseudo-

Melito is dependent on the (ommon source it shares with W, but his

neglect of their arguments seriously undermines his own case. In pla-

cing Pseudo-Melito at the beginning, rather than the culmination, of the

Latin tradition, Mimouni ignores the many features pointing to its

being a development of pre$lious texts, not a starting-point. He also

places too much reliance 01J1lhe Pseudo-Leucius, since we have no

proof outside the Preface to Pseudo-Melito of the existence of such a

text, and it is very likely to be nothing but a device to gain credibility

for Pseudo-Melito. The evidence, therefore, does not support his con-

jectures.

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descend from a common source, which Transitus W adapted

comparatively little and whi~h Pseudo-Melito reworked much

more radically. This lost text, as Wenger suggests,40 ay be an

intermediary text which descends from M. This intermediary

must have been an abbreviatoo text which introduced some air-

ly minor original phrasesand ideas.

The manuscripts of TransitusW divide into two main families,

one consisting of the manuscripts F, G, M, P, T and V, the other

of B, Rand S. Wilmart giv~ preference to the first family in

producing what he terms a neutral text, rather than attempting

to work back to an original form.41The ending of the work dif-

fers considerably in these tw() families: both relate the apostles

arrival at the sepulchre, the (:oming of Jesus, his command to

Michael to receive the body of Mary into the clouds and the

apostles being received into the clouds also. Jesus then com-

mands the clouds Out rent in paradiso , with two manuscripts (R

and S) specifying sub arbore uitae. 42The manuscripts of the

first family, represented here by G, M and P, read Et sic depo-

suerunt nubes corpus beatae Mariae in paradiso, et est ibi glorif-

icans deum cum omnibus elcctis eius. 43Wilmart considers this

reading superior. According to the second family, Rand S (B

lacks the end), the body of Mary is placed in paradise and her

soul is replaced in her body: S reads: Et adtulerunt angeli ani-

mam sanctaeMariae et posuerunt earn n corpore ipsius, ubente

domino nostro Iesu Christo, et habebit gloriam ibi in sempitema

saecula saeculorum amen and R: Tulerunt igitur angeli ani-

mam beate marie et posuit earndominus in corpore ipsius. 44

Comparing these variant forms of the ending with the Syriac

Obsequiesand with R is revealing and suggests hat Wilmart was

incorrect in seeing n G, M and P the original ending. Both the

Obsequies and the Greek }if;have Mary s body being placed

under the tree of life, her soul being brought (by the angels in

the Obsequies,by Michael in the Greek R) and replaced in her

body. The tree of life in Wilmart s Rand S manuscripts is

undoubtedly original, therefore, as s their account of the angels

replacing Mary s soul in her body. The Latin text in origin, there-

fore, was again an assumption text testifying to Mary s body and

soul being reunited in paradise, but the G, M and P manuscripts

40. L assomption,. 66.

41. L ancien ecit , p. 325.

42. Ibid.,pp. 356-7.

43. Ibid.,p. 357.

44. bid.

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have omitted the reunifica:ttion f body and soul, concluding with

the placing of Mary s body in paradise. The only word used in

connection with Mary s body in W is paradisus, whereas cae/urn

is associatedwith Christ: again, then, it is clear in this text that

Mary s body and soul are preserved in a paradise considered

separate from heaven.

Two manuscripts,one from each amily, add a further sentence

to the endings given above: Wilmart s R adds Tunc praecepit

dominus restituere apostolosunumquemqueunde assumpti uer-

ant ,45 ollowed by a further passagewhich does not belong to the

apocryphon, while M, the expanded version of W, adds Et

iterum precepit dominus angelis ut irent unusquisque n locum,

ubi sunt cotidie cum magno gaudio let antes et benedicentes

deum. 46Both sentencesare paralleled elsewhere n the tradition,

as in the Syriac Obsequiesand the Ethiopic Liber Requiei the

angelsare returned to their places, n R the apostles.M s account

of the angels being returned to their places s primitive therefore,

as it agrees with the Syriac, and earlier than the apostles being

returned to theirs, as we find in the Greek R and the Latin

Transitus W manuscript R. In the Syriac the angels departure

forms the beginning of the transition to the descensus art of the

text. The agreementof M and the Syriac is striking and suggests

that the fuller account from which M s additions were taken may

have been a version with descensus, s in Paris, Bibliotheque

nationale, lat. 3550, from the thirteenth century, which contains a

text which seems o be an independent translation of a Greek

source similar to that which lies behind Transitus W. The part

parallelling Wends: Et sie corpus beate marie posuerunt in par-

adiso, sub arbore lite. Et attulerunt animarn beate marie angeli

domini et posuerunt earn in corpore eius. Et dominus precepit

angelis ut irent in locum suum ;47t is followed by a short descen-

sus,very similar to that in the Syriac Obsequies.48

Wilmart considered ha1 TransitusB dated from the sixth cen-

tury and thought that TransitusW was the text behind Transitus

B; TransitusW would therefore have to date from the sixth cen-

tury at the latest.49Wenger considers hat it probably dates from

the seventh or eighth century.50That TransitusW is the nearest

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. WENGER, assomption,p. 258.

48. Quoted below, p. 93.

49. L ancien fecit , p. 323.

50. L assomption,p. 66.

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Latin transitus to Gregory of Tours's account of Mary's death

suggests,however, that either it or its source (or another closely

related version) had to be circulating by the end of the sixth cen-

tury at the latest.

Both versions of Transitus B were circulating by the eighth

century and it seems ikely that the text itself was composed in

the seventh century or, at the earliest, the end of the sixth.51 n

addition to its R family source, Pseudo-Melito also draws on the

Passio /ohannis of Pseudo-Melito, which probably dates from

the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century.52

Pseudo-Melito is the work of a self-consciousauthor profess-

ing to evaluate critically a previous account and find it lacking.

This self-consciousnesss in many ways the defining characteris-

tic of this version of the narrative of Mary's death: it is decidedly

more than yet another abbreviation for liturgical use or another

fairly straightforward though somewhat censored version of its

source, as is the case with Transitus W. Stylistically, it is much

more individual, mannered and syntactically complex, unlike the

generally paratactic and more artless Transitus W, for example.

In its treatment of the central issue, he assumptionof Mary, the

author of Transitus B reveals his awarenessof the implications

of the narrative by having the apostles declare clearly the basis

for the assumption. Pseudo- \1elito,ndeed, gives more weight to

the resurrection and assumption than any other apocryphal nar-

rative does and in this it reads like a reflective development of

the tradition, the work of someone meditating on a prior text.

Only in Pseudo-Melito does Christ ask the apostles what should

happen to Mary's body. Their reply sets forth a 'theological' rea-

son for the necessityof such an assumption: Peter and the apos-

tles say hat, as the Lord chose Mary as his immaculate taberna-

cle, it appears right to them that, just as Christ, having overcome

death, should reign in glory, so Mary's body should be raised up

and taken with Him rejoicing into heaven. Christ accedes o the

apostles' logic and raises up Mary's body, saying to it that, as it

did not suffer corruption by sexual ntercourse, it should not suf-

fer dissolution in the grave. Her perfect virginity and virginal

motherhood are therefore the basis for Mary's corporal assump-

tion.

51. MIMOUNI,Dormition, p. 272.

52. E. JUNODand J.-D. KAF$TLI, L'histoire des acres apocryphes des

apotres du ll/~ au IX~ siecle: Le cas desActes de Jean (Geneva, 1982),p.

104; JUNODand KAESTLI,eds., Acta lohannis, Corpus Christianorum

Series apocryphorum 1 and 2 (Tumhout, 1983),1,768-9.

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This scene is designed 10 focus attention on the theological

necessity or Mary's corporal assumption,as the apostles present

reasons which Christ ac~epts as compelling, and it also, as

Cothenet points out, presents he corporal assumptionas part of

the apostolic faith.53Theirs is in essence he argument which the

later, non-apocryphal Pseudo-Augustine tract was to present

with great success.54heir argument had already been implicit in

earlier texts, however: it is implied, for example, in the appealof

Mary's dead body to Chris1 o remember t, becauseshe had pre-

served the treasure entrusted to her, and Christ's reply in

Transitus W, in which he says that he would not abandon her,

because she is the temple of God and had preserved what was

entrusted to her. Pseudo-Melito has grasped clearly the implica-

tions of its source here, tl1Jerefore, nd has made the argument

more explicit by having Christ pose the problem to the apostles.

It is alone in specifying that the reunion of body and soul took

place on earth: Christ brings with him Mary's soul when he

returns after the three days which the body spends n the tomb

and body and soul are thetnl ssumed ogether.

Pseudo-Melito is the first apocryphal text which seems to

place Mary's body and so\WIogether in heaven, rather than in a

paradise separate from heaven. In this connection the question

of paradisus and caelurn in Pseudo-Melito needs some elucida-

tion. In Transitus W the only word used in connection with

Mary's body is paradisus,with caelurn being reserved for Christ,

but both words are found in Pseudo-Melito, hough distributed

differently in each version of the text. Haibach-Reinisch argues

that Bl preserves an origjnal distinction better than B2, with

Mary's body brought to paradise and Christ ascending o heav-

en, but it is difficult to be sure whether or not there was a real

distinction in meaning for the author or redactors of this text.55

In B2 Christ, at Mary's deathbed, tells her (presumably her

soul): 'intra in receptacull lmuitae aeternae, expectant te enim

caelestesmilitiae, ut introducant te in paradisi gaudia.'56Three

days ater, at the tomb, Peller asks Christ to bring Mary with him

'laetantem in caelum' and Mary is resurrected. Having taken

leave of the apostles, Dominus, cum canentibus angelis et matre

53. 'Marie dans es apocryphe:s', . 141.

54. H. LAUSBERG,Zur litetarischen Gestaltung des Transitus Beatae

Mariae', Historisches ahrbuch 72 (1953),25-49.

55. HAIBACH-REINISCH,in neuer 'Transitus',pp. 162-4. I am most gra-

teful to Ananya Kabir for discussing his problem with me.

56. Ibid., p. 75.

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sua receptus est in paradiso.'57From this it would appear that

Mary and Christ are together after her assumption, n a location

which is called paradise or bcaven, apparently without distinc-

tion. In Bl's deathbed scene Christ first tells Mary 'intra recep-

taculum uitae aeternae', then later says: 'Veni secura, quia

expectat e caelestismilitia, ut te introducat ad paradisi gaudia.'58

Peter makes the same request that Christ bring Mary to caelurn

and at the end: 'dominus ...receptus est in caelum, et angeli cum

eo, deferentes beatam Mariam in paradisum Dei.'59 In Bl it it

possible that the two locations are separate, as the conclusion

may differentiate the destinatilion f Christ from that of Mary, but

the angels who are carrying Mary's body to paradise are with

Christ as he goes to heaven and in this version Peter also asks

that Mary be taken to heavcn. It seems, herefore, that in this

version too heaven and paradise are probably synonymous. t is

possible that the obscuring of an initially sharperdistinction, such

as we have in Transitus A I1indW, in fact contributed to the

authoritative definitiveness with which Pseudo-Melito presents

the corporal assumption: because for him his source, though it

clearly demanded the clarification he felt it necessary o supply,

presented Mary's assumption o full cohabitation with Christ, he

felt able to give this aspectof the text greater prominence than

ever before in the apocryphal tradition. Transitus B is also the

first text in this tradition in which the apostlesdo not accompany

Mary's body: again this is pre umablya result of the equation of

paradise and heaven n the mind of the redactor, who was reluc-

tant to have the apostles escort Mary to heaven. Transitus B2,

however, preserves Christ's oommand to the apostles at the end

of the text ordering them to get nto the cloud with him : this is an

original detail, paralleled in tble Obsequies nd going back to the

stageof the text when the apostlesaccompaniedMary and Christ

to view the next world. Even in TransitusA and W the apostles

accompany the body to parl1idise, eturning immediately once

Mary's soul has been replaced in her body. As there is no longer

any reason or the apostles o come nto the cloud with Christ (in

Pseudo-Melito they are brought on different clouds back to their

preaching stations), the Bl rcdactor dropped 'in nube' from the

command 'Accedite ad me in nube.' What we find in B2, there-

fore, is a redundant feature testifying to the rewriting of an earli-

er verSIon.

57. Ibid.,p. 87.

58. TISCHENDORF,d., ApocalypsesApocryphae,p. 129.

59. Ibid.,pp. 135-6.

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Pseudo-Melito, herefore, is an important text not becauseof

any radical innovation, apart from heaven as the destination of

Mary s reunited body and soul (and it is probable that the redac-

tor would not have perceived this as an innovation), but for the

way in which it tightens the narrative, focussingon Mary and the

apostles, and higWights the corporal assumption. ts form of the

narrative became, to quote Wilmart, quasi-official in the Latin

tradition,60 and its manuscripts outnumber those of any other

Latin text. The claim in the preface to be revising an heretical

text is overstated, ike most selling-pitches, as ts source was not

very different in import: Pseudo-Melito n fact carries the impli-

cations of the source-narrative further, rather than modifying

them in the interests of caution.

The Latin tradition, therrefore, apart from the translation of

the Greek Pseudo-Johnand the Pseudo-Joseph f Arimathea, s

indebted to texts ultimately stemming from the Syriac Obsequies

or a related Greek text. In origin this textual family affirmed

belief in the assumptionof Mary s body and soul to paradise and

contained an apocalypse as an integral part, but in the Latin

texts, apart from isolated exceptions, he apocalypseelement has

become detached from the apocryphon. This belief in the

assumption eaches ts apex in the transitus of Pseudo-Melito, n

which Mary s body and soul seem to be assumed to heaven

rather than a separateparadise.

That the apocalypse element was an integral part of these

texts from the beginning may help clarify the function of these

texts.61 n the surviving pain of the Syriac Obsequies here is no

appeal to Mary by the souls in torment and Cothenet suggests

that the way in which Mary and the apostlesplaya role which is

secondary to Michael in the descensuspart of the Obsequies

indicates that the Virgin was ntroduced by the author into a text

where she previously had no place.62 e points out that she does

not even intercede here, whereas in the later, fully developed

Apocalypse of the Virgin tcxts she ntercedes successfully or the

sinners. It is probable, however, that the fragmentary state of the

text is misleading here, as in the related Ethiopic Liber Requiei

the tormented appeal o her explicitly later on in the narrative,63

as they do in the Old Irisb transitus.64n the Latin text in Paris,

60. L ancien fecit , p. 323.

61. I am grateful to Enrico Norelli for pointing this out.

61. Marie dans es apocryphes ,p.12?

63. ARRAS, d. De transitu, I, 38.

64. DONAHUE, d., The Testamentof Mary, p. 55.

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HE TRANSITUS MARIAE

Bibliotheque Nationale, lat. 3550 there is a similar appeal: 'Et

iterurn uidimus in torment s animas constitutas et clamauerunt

ad beatam mariam dicentes Maria, mater domini nostri, maria

uirgo et inmaculata, qui est lumen uerum, et maria regina et

benedicta in sempitemam, ora pro nobis ad dominum nostrum

ut del nobis propiciationem de tormentis qua patimur. '65 In

response to Michael's, Mary's and the apostles' appeals Christ

grants three hours' repose to the tormented souls. Mary's role as

intercessor almost certainly goes back to the beginning of the

tradition, therefore.

Postscript: The Old English Narratives

My own work on the transitus texts began with an edition of

the two Old English texts which are translated from the Latin

Transitus Wand Transitus B and, as these are little known, it

may be interesting to give some details about them here.66The

two Old English narratives are preserved in manuscripts dating

from the end of the tenth century and the eleventh century. It is

very difficult, however, to date them more closely than this: we

know that Transitus B2 was available in England at the begin-

ning of the eighth century, as it is quoted by Bede, and we know

that translations from Latin ~nto Old English were already being

made in this period, but no one has yet found any reliable lin-

guistic test that will allow us to date Old English texts accurately.

The first text is found in the: margins of an Old English transla-

tion of Bede's Ecclesiastical History in Cambridge, Corpus

Christi College 41 and is a competent, faithful translation of a

text of TransitusB2. The piece was presumably transcribed into

this manuscript for private reading, as its foffi1at, around three

sides of the Bede text, would have made it very difficult to read

aloud. It is not easy o specify which manuscript version of the

Latin is closest o the Old English, partly because he vernacular

abbreviates the Latin, partly because many of the differences

among the Latin manuscripts are differences in word order or

65. WENGER, 'assomption,p. 259.

66. The Apocryphal Gospels of Mary in Anglo-Saxon England,

Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England ;26 Cambridge, 1998).The

text in CCCC 41 has been edited by R. GRANT, Three Homilies from

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 41 (Ottawa, 1982) and by H.

Tristram, Vier altenglische Predigten aus der heterodoxen Tradition

(Freiburg, 1970), while the second text has been edited by R. Morris,

The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, Early English Test Society,

Original Series,58,63 and 73 (1.874-80,eproas one vol., 1967).

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M.CLAYTON

different choices among words which are more or less synony-

mous. Such variations are virtually impossible to detect in a

translation. Where the differences are more substantial, howev-

er, D's text seems o reflect a version like, but not identical to,

that in Haibach-Reinisch's manuscripts 01,02 and Y, closely

related manuscripts of whi,ch wo are English (the eleventh- to

twelfth- century Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud lat. 86, and the

fourteenth-century Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson D.

1236).

The Old English text is an abbreviated version of the source,

Transitus B2, typically omitting or shortening passagesof the

Latin, especially speeches..which are not strictly necessary o

understanding he narrative. So, for example, the angel's speech

to Mary in ch. 2, promising that the apostleswould come, entire-

ly cuts his lengthy explanation of the Lord's ability to gather the

apostles ogether. In describingMary's end, the text seems o fol-

low its source's dentificati<J n f paradise and heaven. It says hat

Mary will be led into neorxnawonges efean (ch. 7: 'the joys of

paradise'), but Peter and the apostles ask that Mary be led into

heaven (ch. 15) and at the end of the narrative Christ 'mid pam

singendum englum and mid his meder he wres onfangen on

neorxnawonge' ('was received with the singing angels and with

his mother into paradise' : ch. 17). As both he and Mary are

received nto the sameplace, paradise here is presumably denti-

cal to heaven, as t seemsalso to be in the Latin source.

The second Old English text, extant in Cambridge, Corpus

Christi College 198 and Princeton University Library, W. H.

Scheide Collection 71 (the Blickling Homilies), is far more prob-

lematic. It draws on two main sources,as well as the Magnificat

and part of the Beatitudes: on all of TransitusW for its account

of Mary's death and assumption, followed by a further account

of the asssumptionwhich is drawn from TransitusB2.67Of all the

manuscripts collated by Wilmart, the Old English text seems

closest o his G, St Gallen" Stiftsbibliothek, 732, from the ninth

century, although clearly not identical in all details. Of the man-

uscripts of Transitus B2 collated by Haibach-Reinisch, her T, F,

67. See R. WILLARD, On Blickling Homily XIII: The Assumption of

the Virgin', Review of English Studies 12 (1936), 1-17, and 'The Two

Accounts of the Assumptiotl in Blickling Homily XIII', Review of

English Studies 14 (1938), 1-19, and my 'Blickling Homily XIII

Reconsidered', Leeds Studies n English 17 (1986), 25-40,and The Cult

of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in

Anglo-Saxon England 2 (Cambridge, 1990),pp. 232-4.

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95

IB TRANSITUS MARIAE

01, 02 and V, all five of which are related, seem closest o the

Old English.

The two source texts have been combined in an extremely

clumsy manner in the Old English, in that the translator (if it

was he who was responsible) has continued the story of Mary s

death up to the very end of TransitusWand has then added on

the final sections of B2, even though they overlap with what has

already been recounted and this results in some events being

recounted twice. Willard argued that the motive for the combi-

nation was a desire to give a fuller account of the assumption

than was contained in Transitus W, but it seems hat the version

of TransitusW from which the translator was working had been

modified to eliminate the resurrection of Mary and this may also

have been a factor. The ending of the part of the text translated

from W reads: Ond Drihten bebead orem wolcnum pret hie

eodan on neorxnawange ond orer asetton orere eadigan Marian

saule. Ond on neorxnawange bio a wuldor mid Gode ond mid

eallum his gecorenum soolice.. And the Lord commanded the

clouds that they should go to paradise and set down there the

soul of the blessed Mary. And truly in paradise there is always

glory with God and with all his chosen ones. ]68This is clearly

based on the ending in Wilmart s manuscripts G, M and P, but

the Old English, becauseof the addition of the end of Transitus

B2, which recounts the assumptionof Mary s body in detail, has

here changed body to soul: Et praecepit dominus nubibus ut

irent in paradiso. Et sic deposuerunt nubes corpus beatae

Mariae in paradiso, et est ibi glorificans deum cum omnibus

electis eius.,69 his family of manuscripts does not have a resur-

rection of Mary s body, merely placing it in paradise, with no

reunification with the soul. Other details of the Old English

translation, too, suggesta source which had been altered. The

Old English translator, therefore, was working with a version of

Transitus W in which Mary s body and soul were not reunited,

and this does not seem to have suited his own evident attach-

ment to the idea of the corporal assumption of a resurrected

Mary. He therefore added on to TransitusW the end of Transitus

B2, that version of the story Vl/hich as the fullest account of the

resurrection and corporal assumption of Mary. This attachment

to the idea of the corporal a.~sumptions manifest throughout

the text, in which a series of l1listranslationsseems o have been~

68. All quotations and translatiol1s rom my forthcoming edition.

69. WILMART,L ancien recit , pp. 356-7.

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96

M.CLAYTON

motivated by a desire to recount this event. This results in a nar-

rative which is unfortunately close to farce at times, with Mary

being transported or physically ifted by the apostles nto heaven

at intervals throughout the text. While we obviously cannot be

absolutely certain that it was the translator who combined the

two apocrypha here, the ~.1umsinessith which the transition is

managed s very much in keeping with the numerous other faults

which can be attributed to him, producing what Torkar has

called the worst translated homily in Old English.7O

The text is very confusing in its account of where Mary s soul

is in the interim between death and resurrection. Mary dies and

her soul is given to Michael (ch. 25), but we are never told to

where it is brought and where it is while Mary is being prepared

70. R. ToRKAR, Die Ohllmacht der Textkritik, am Beispiel der

Ausgaben der dritten Vercelfi-Homilie ,Anglo-Saxonica: Festschrift Ur

Hans Schabram zum 65. Geburtstag, d. K. GRINDAand C.-D. WETZEL

(Munich, 1994),pp. 225-50,at p. 246,n. 103.To give just one example of

the inept translation: in chapter 14 TransitusW reads,as John recounts

how he was brought to the Virgin s house: Subito circumdedit me

nubes et rapuit me de medio eorum, uidentibus omnibus qui ibidem

erant (WILMART, Vancien recit , p. 334), which seems at first to bear

little relation to the Old English: and c)asremninga c)a embsealdon

ealle c)aapostolas c)a halgan Marian ond hie gegripan on hire middel.

and c)agesawonhie ond ea1lec)ac)ec)rerwreron [ And then sudden-

ly all the apostles surroundc-d he holy Mary and they seized her waist.

And they saw, as did all who were there, that .. ] Nubes s missing in

Wilmart s manuscripts F, G, M and T and presumably was also absent

from the source of the Old English. The translator, clearly not realizing

that it was understood from the previous sentence,went in searchof a

subject, deciding on the ap()Stles. ohn himself is the object of this sen-

tence in the Latin (me), but in the Old English sentencehe is now part

of the collective subject, an~ the translator has to find an object. oa hal-

gan Marian makes no sense n terms of the Latin story at this point, as

the Virgin should not even be present in the city where John is pre-

aching, but it is possible that the translator understood me as an abbre-

viation for Maria, giving Oa embsealdon ealle oa apostolas oa halgan

Marian (see WILLARD, L~ ville d Agathe?: Note sur Ie Transitus

Mariae C , Echos d Orient 38 (1939), 346-54,at p. 350). and hie gegri-

pan on hire middel obviousJygoes back to rapuit me de media eorum

and Willard suggests hat the original translator may have written of

hire middel, qui serait un equivalent passable du latin (Ibid., p. 350).

This is possible but, given that the subject of the Old English is the

apostles rather than the cloud, it is also vt(ry likely that he wrote on hire

middel, the reading of both manuscripts. While the Latin, therefore,

describes the cloud seizing John, the Old English, absurdly, has all of

the apostles grasping Mary s waist. uidentibus omnibus qui ibidem erant

is then attached to the next clause by the translator.

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97

HE TRANSI11JSMARIAE

for burial, while the funeral procession s attacked by the Jews,

while the chief priest is attached to the bier and then healed and

while the apostles bury Mary. What are we to make of its where-

abouts? Transitus W does not specify either where Michael

takes the soul, but this is less of a problem because t does not

have a second taking of the soul. When the apostles are sitting

around the tomb in the Old English text, Christ then arrives and

Michael is directed to recei1, eMary s soul (body, of course, in

the source, TransitusW) into the clouds, which he does (chs. 47-

8); the translator takes no account of the fact that Michael had

already received it. The clouds are then ordered to bear Mary s

soul to paradise, where bi3 a wuldor mid Gode and mid his

gecorenum soolice [ And truly in paradise there is always glory

with God and with all his chosenones ], a mistranslation of est

ibi glorificans deum cum omnibus electis eius 71 resulting in a

seeming dentification of paradise and heaven. This equation of

the two is in keeping with the Pseudo-Melito text, to which the

translator soon urns, but not with the TransitusW text which he

was still following at this point. The careful separation of par-

adise and heaven n that text, which associatesChrist with heav-

en and Mary with paradise, has already been disrupted in the

Old English, however, when Mary asks he apostles o reveal to

her who told them that she was to go to heaven the next day.

The Latin reads here, without any mention of heaven: quis

uobis adnunciauit quod ego exitura sum de corpore ? 72 t would

seem, herefore, that for the translator both terms could be used

indiscriminately and that he did not appreciate W s punctilious

distinctions. When it comes to translating the conclusion of

Transitus B2, the text has Michael present Mary s soul before

Christ and Mary is received into paradise. A mistranslation

again results in a double reception of Mary s resurrected body

into the clouds: at the beginning of ch. 52 of the Old English

text Michael hie oa ahof up on wolcnum beforan Drihtnes

gesyhoe [ and he raised hf;r up in the clouds in the sight of the

Lord ]. A little further on in the same chapter oa apostolas on

heora mregene hofon Marian lichoman up mid wolcnum ond

rune oa asetton on neorxnawangesgefean rAnd the apostles in

their power raised Mary s body up into the clouds and set it

down in the joys of paradise ]. Any reader attempting to follow

the exact course of events could not but be baffled.

71. Ibid., p. 357.

72. Ibid., pp. 336-7.

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98 M.CLAYTON

This Old English text, therefore, is in many ways a complete

mess, estifying to the lack of Latinity on the part of the transla-

tor, who also showsgross.gnorance of what one would expect o

be basic points of Christian learning. Another mistranslation, for

example, produces the effect of suggesting hat he thought that

Mary s assumption took place on the same day as Christ s cruci-

fixion, a confusion of 15 August with Easter. While one may

wonder about the sort of milieu in which this level of learning

was acceptable, nevertheless the text also clearly shows an

intense interest in narrating the events of the assumption and

the anticipations and repetitions of this throughout witness to

the translator s desire to get to what for him was obviously the

main point of the narrative, Mary s corporal assumption into

heaven.

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