The Virgin Mary in Byzantium, c.400-1000

Abstract

Early homilies on Mary, the Theotokos, seem remarkably well developed when they burst into view at about the beginning of the fifth century. 1 Many of these works were composed in honour of a new feast in memory of the Virgin. This was celebrated throughout the eastern territories of the Christian Roman empire either on 15 August (in Jerusalem) in connection with the feast of Christ's Nativity, either on a Sunday before or the day after 25 December, in Constantinople. 2 Judging by the content of the homilies that were written in honour of this feastsome of which will be studied belowit was an occasion on which Mary's role in the incarnation was recognised. She helped to inaugurate a new creation by means of her virginal conception and birth of Christ, the Son and Word of God. Mary is praised in exalted terms in the surviving orations, which were composed and delivered in Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, and other cities and parishes in the Eastern Roman empire. However, her role as protector and intercessor of believing Christians would not be celebrated for another century. That element of Marian devotion seems to have developed more slowly than did the Christological emphasis. This is not to say that individual Christians did not yet venerate the Theotokos as a figure of power in her own right. 3 It is possible either that Church leaders viewed this aspect of her cult as unsuitable for festal preaching or that they sought to rein in the burgeoning cult. To put this in another way, early Byzantine bishops and presbyters channelled popular devotion to the Virgin into 1 A useful assessment of the fifth-century and later Greek homilies that deal with the Virgin Mary can be found in Caro 1971-3. For studies of individual preachers who delivered sermons on the