The Virgin in Song. Thomas Arentzen
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of her intercession back to this period.124 Even earlier, in the second century, the Protevangelium of James presents the life of the Virgin Mary in narrative. The first-century Gospel of Luke, in its very opening chapter, displays a young maiden who hears “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” from the archangel Gabriel. In the same chapter Elizabeth calls Mary the “Mother of my Lord,” and the Virgin sings out the Magnificat about herself.125 While some texts from this early period appear entirely riveted by the young maiden from Nazareth, it is true that other texts show little or no interest. We have to admit that the testimonies from the first three centuries are scattered, and that most of the texts are hard to place both in time and space. We cannot, in other words, reconstruct a plausible history of early Marian thought and devotion.
The Council of Ephesus did coincide with an upsurge in Marian devotion and dedications, and it is likely that its decision was seen as a green light for a more outspoken Marian cult: new churches were built and new shrines appeared. In Constantinople, for instance, both the Blachernae Church and that at Chalkoprateia were established as Marian shrines in the fifth century. The former housed the relic of the Virgin’s robe while the latter later came to accommodate her girdle.126 It was also in the fifth century that Marian literature started to flourish. We have several Greek post-Ephesian homilies that are either dedicated to the Virgin or meditate on her role. These include works ascribed to Basil of Seleucia, Theodotus of Ancyra (d. ca. 445), Antipater of Bostra (d. ca. 458), and Hesychius of Jerusalem (d. after 451). Proclus of Constantinople sermonized zealously against Nestorius and wrote a number of important Marian homilies.127 It is possible that even the majestic Marian poem Akathistos was written during this century and in the same metropolis.128 The early witnesses to a tradition of Mary’s Dormition or Assumption into heaven can also be dated to the fifth century.129
The bulk of Marian literature from this period does not explore the personal features of the Virgin, her feelings, or her interaction with other persons in various settings. They tend rather to interpret her as a personification of the incarnational mystery. Mary becomes a way to understand Christ or a symbol entangled in the cluster of salvation. In her womb fifth-century authors find a lens through which the divine Word may be appreciated fully. This is the same way that the Council of Ephesus had dealt with her. The council subscribed to Cyril’s view: “If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore that the holy Virgin is the Mother of God [i.e. Theotokos] (for she bore in a fleshly way the Word of God become flesh), let him be anathema.”130 His words were included among the decrees of the council. Failure to acknowledge the indisputable connection between the Virgin and the divine incarnation—failure to see the Incarnation in her—became a token of dissent.
An alternative way to present the Virgin in fourth-and fifth-century literature was as a model for the virginal monks and nuns of the growing ascetic movement. Ecclesiastical authors hoped that celibate ascetics would find inspiration in a woman whose virginity came to accommodate God. The great Alexandrian archbishop Athanasius (295–373), for instance, writes in a letter to virgins:
[Mary] desired good works, doing what is proper, having true thoughts in faith and purity. And she did not desire to be seen by people…. Nor did she have an eagerness to leave her house, nor was she at all acquainted with the streets; rather she remained in her house being calm, imitating the fly in honey. She virtuously spent the excess of her manual labour on the poor. And she did not acquire eagerness to look out the window, rather to look at the Scriptures…. And she did not permit anyone near her body unless it was covered, and she controlled her anger and extinguished the wrath in her inmost thoughts. Her words were calm; her voice, moderate; she did not cry out…. There was no evil in her heart nor contentiousness with those related to her, except concerning the civic life…. Instead of wine, she had the teachings of the Saviour, and she took more pleasure in the latter than in the former, so that she too received the profitable teachings and said, “Your breasts, my brother, are better than wine.” … This is the image of virginity, for holy Mary was like this. Let her who wishes to be a virgin look to her, for on account of things like this the Word chose her so that he might receive this flesh through her.131
This is only an excerpt; Athanasius describes at length how an ascetic virgin should behave, and he ascribes it all to Mary. In the present context it is worth noting that the Alexandrian bishop depicts an emotionally controlled person who is corporeally secluded and never cries out or raises her voice. The only sort of conflict she engages in concerns the reprobate civic life. Instead of wine, she drinks wisdom from her brother’s (i.e., son’s) breasts. Romanos, as we shall see, deviates drastically from such a characterization—so much so that he virtually turns it upside down.
It is this fourth-and fifth-century period that in many ways has shaped our modern ideas about the Virgin Mary in late antiquity: the Christological Theotokos of Ephesus, the womb of incarnation, a mediation in flesh between divinity and humanity, an ascetic virginity—these are all notions that accord with twentieth-century perceptions of the Virgin in early Christianity. And these notions have been used to interpret the sixth century and the poetic Mother of God in Romanos. The view is still current that Romanos in essence reproduced the Mariology of the great figures of the past, specifically their strictly Christological Mariology.132
Construction Work and Marian Cult
It is true that Romanos’s oeuvre is clearly influenced by figures of the past. No literature can escape the past, and no language can avoid relying on former linguistic expressions. Stylistic elements as well as literary motifs from several Greek homilists can be traced in the Melodist’s songs. The Syriac verses of such writers as Ephrem the Syrian and Romanos’s older contemporary Jacob of Serug show remarkable resemblances with the poetry of the kontakia.133 Nevertheless, this book argues that in the realm of Marian representation, Romanos deviates both from ascetic strands and from the Christological strand of earlier Marian texts. He reveals a developed fascination with Mary’s personal qualities, and he takes interest in various aspects and stages of her life, her psychology, and her emotions. She breastfeeds instead of drinking from Christ’s breasts, and Romanos emphasizes her maternity as much as her maidenhood. Mary emerges as a separate and highly verbal person on the civic stage that Romanos creates. Instead of merely pointing to her son, she stands next to him and cooperates with him. The kontakia do not encourage their listeners to interpret or imitate the Virgin; they urge the audience to relate to the Mother of God as a sovereign being. The poet is passionately concerned about the faithful’s relationship with Mary. He fosters her cult.
Romanos saw the ecclesiastical promotion of several Marian feasts, or even their introduction into the Constantinopolitan calendar:134
1. The Feast of the Annunciation on March 25 was introduced during Romanos’s time in Constantinople, and his kontakion is the oldest festal hymn extant. In earlier centuries, the Annunciation event had been celebrated as a part of the Christmas festival.
2. The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin on September 8 was possibly introduced in the same century, in which case Romanos’s kontakion is the oldest hymn for this feast too.135
3. The February 2 Feast of the Presentation was introduced in the same period. It was a Christological feast that had strong Marian traits.136
4. The December 25 Christmas celebration was not new in Constantinople, but Romanos shows us a palpably Marian version of this feast.
5. The Feast of the Dormition was probably introduced in Constantinople after Romanos’s death; at least we do not have a Dormition hymn from his hand.
Romanos wrote his kontakia about the Virgin for these and other festivals, and he expected his listeners to take part in the ritual celebrations of the Mother of God. He gave narrative content to the cultic events. In several instances the kontakion stories portray the Virgin surrounded and extolled by the people, as if in a cultic setting. On the Annunciation starts by underlining that the “we” of the audience are praising her “as blessed when we cry every day: ‘Hail, unwedded bride!’”137 The hymn goes on to invite everyone to come along to the Virgin Mary
and greet