medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
May show depths of my ignorance, but I thought this looked fascinating.
Rosemary Hayes
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From: "The Medieval Review" <[log in to unmask]>
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Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 3:03 PM
Subject: TMR 12.10.08 Brubaker and Cunningham, The Cult of the Mother ofGod
(Brown)
Brubaker, Leslie and Mary B. Cunningham, eds. <i>The Cult of the
Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images</i>. Series: Birmingham
Byzantine and Ottoman Studies. Farnham, U.K. and Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2011. Pp. xxii, 306. $124.95. ISBN-13: 9780754662662.
Reviewed by Rachel Fulton Brown
The University of Chicago
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Nearly thirty five years have passed since Averil Cameron published
her seminal articles on the sixth- and seventh-century
Constantinopolitan cult of the Theotokos and its importance for the
history of Byzantium--twenty five in relative silence. Happily, this
silence has now been resoundingly broken. As Cameron herself notes in
her Introduction to the present volume, the past decade or so has
witnessed "a remarkable surge of interest in the subject of the cult
of the Virgin in late antiquity and Byzantium," a surge which to date
"shows no sign of abating" (1). Papers presented at conferences
sponsored by the Benaki Museum in Athens (2000), the Ecclesiastical
History Society (2001-2002), the International Conference on Patristic
Studies (2003 and 2007), and the Arts and Humanities Research Council
(2006)--the latter providing the original venue for the presentation
of many of the papers in the present volume--have raised significant
questions about the development of the cult of the Virgin both before
and after iconoclasm. Studies and translations of critical texts have
likewise appeared, many from contributors to the present volume,
including Leena Mari Peltomaa (on the <i>Akathistos</i>), Stephen
Shoemaker (on stories of the Dormition), Jane Baun (on apocalyptic
tales), and Brian Daley and Mary Cunningham (on homilies for the
Virgin's feasts). Historians, art historians, archeologists,
liturgists, textual editors and critics: all have been drawn to the
subject of the Theotokos, so much so that (as Margaret Mullett notes
in her concluding reflections), when invited to participate in the
2006 conference, one "very distinguished Byzantinist...sent his good
wishes.with the words 'not the Theotokos <i>again</i>?'" (280).
There is much to be celebrated in the studies published here and
elsewhere, if nothing else for the precision that can now be brought
to the chronology of many of the most important elements in the
history of Mary's cult. And yet, much as with the icons in which she
is so famously represented, the question remains whether the Mother of
God is present in the current spate of studies in a way in which her
ancient and medieval devotees would actually recognize. Again, as
Cameron herself notes, although "many scholars are undoubtedly driven
to this subject by religious motives...for others...Mary, or the
Theotokos, fascinates because of her infinite variety, her capacity to
escape whatever formulation we may try to impose upon her. She is
both ordinary woman and the Mother of God...In the words of the
Akathistos, she is indeed 'the woman in whom all opposites are
reconciled'." (5)
Or is she? We may now be clearer about when her churches were founded
and how their liturgies developed (as Rina Avner shows for the church
of the Kathisma near Jerusalem in Chapter 1, Dirk Krausmüller for the
church of the Chalkoprateia in Constantinople in Chapter 14, and Nancy
P. Sevcenko for certain monasteries in Chapter 15); likewise about the
chronology of the appeal to Mary's emotion (pre- rather than post-
iconoclasm, according to Stephen Shoemaker's study of the seventh-
century <i>Life of the Virgin</i> in Chapter 4). We are much better
informed about the sources and themes of the major homilies of the
pre-iconoclastic sixth and seventh centuries (discussed by Pauline
Allen in Chapter 5) and of the post-iconoclastic eighth and ninth
(explored by Andrew Louth, Mary B. Cunningham, and Niki Tsironis in
Chapters 10, 11, and 12); likewise about the themes and arguments of
her iconography (explored for the period before iconoclasm by Henry
Maguire in Chapter 3 and in the mid-twelfth century Kokkinobaphos
manuscripts by Kalliroe Linardou in Chapter 9). We now appreciate how
salutations to the Theotokos were translated from Greek into Syriac
(as Natalie Smelova shows in Chapter 8). We can now recognize Mary as
the guardian of sacred spaces under threat from visiting women along
the pilgrimage routes of Palestine (as Derek Kruger shows in Chapter
2) and as a veritable bodhisattva staying on earth to help those who
invoke her Son as revealed in the "lowbrow" literature of saints'
lives, histories, miracle stories, edifying tales, and apocryphal
narratives (analyzed by Jane Baun in Chapter 13). And (thanks to
Bissera V. Pentcheva, Chapter 16) we now know that her most precious
miracle-working icons, at least before they were melted down by the
Komnenoi, were made of metal, not paint.
Nevertheless, again as Mullett notes, the really big questions are
still out there: how to contextualize the second-century apocryphal
gospels, above all the <i>Protoevangelium of James</i> upon which so
much later devotion to the Virgin depends (as Cunningham demonstrates
in Chapter 11); how to date the <i>Akathistos</i>, whether to the
period immediately following the council of Ephesus (as Peltomaa
argues persuasively in Chapter 7) or later; how to explain the fifth-
and sixth-century developments of the cult in Constantinople (not
directly addressed in the present collection); how to explain the
relationship between the various genres in which Byzantine Christians
expressed their devotion (touched on throughout the present essays).
For Mullett, as for the majority of the authors represented here,
these would seem to be largely technical questions, gaps to be filled
in our understanding of an historical development. Nowhere (or almost
nowhere) is it suggested how answering these questions might force us
to revise our understanding of the significance of Mary's cult for
Byzantium, not to mention Christianity itself. Rather, again in
Mullett's words, Mary is taken throughout as a figure that is "good to
think with" (286)--that is, she is no more taken as "herself" than, as
is often claimed, she was historically in discussions of Christology
or icons.
This is a tendency by no means peculiar to the study of Mary in
Byzantium, nor is this a criticism against the quality of the
scholarship here or elsewhere. But if Byzantinists are not asking the
question, who is? As all of us who have spent our time working with
the development of the cult of the Virgin in the West know all too
well, almost everything of importance in Mary's cult appeared first in
the East: her feast days, her titles, her typologies, her images, her
stories, her laments. It is therefore no idle concern even for those
not working on Byzantium what her cult meant in the East beyond
providing a convenient vehicle for thinking about concerns other than
the meaning of her cult--for example, the intricacies of local
politics, the nature of matter, or the role of the emotions in
theology and devotion. Nor does it help to spend our time trying to
distinguish between instances in which she is considered as a "real
woman capable of suffering" or "an agent in her own right" and those
in which she is venerated "not...for her own sake" but rather, as one
contributor puts it, "as [the] medium and guarantor of the
Incarnation" (148-149) or, as another avers, "as a metonymy for the
affirmation of the full reality of the Incarnation" in the
iconophiles' arguments in defense of the icons (195). Never in the
ancient or medieval tradition is either her activity or passivity as
such actually at issue, despite much hand-wringing on the part of many
modern, particularly feminist, critics of her cult.
Neither, however, will she fit comfortably into modern categories of
agency, not to mention most modern categories of theology. Rather,
she--like her Son--is a mystery, accessible (as Peltomaa argues) if at
all primarily through metaphor. But what metaphors? As Andrew Louth
perceptively remarks in his analysis of John of Damascus' homilies on
her feasts, "What is striking about the examples that John chooses (or
rather the tradition which John is following has chosen) is that they
are all <i>places</i> where God is to be found, and most of these
examples are <i>cultic</i>: the Virgin is the place where God is
encountered and <i>worshipped</i> ...Mary is, if you like,
<i>theotopos</i>--'place of God'!" And yet, for all that she is "the
place of God, the shrine at which we worship...[she] is not just an
edifice, an impersonal temple...nor is she simply the ground that was
fertilized, the fleece on which rain or dew fell--she is not a passive
instrument in God's hands; she is God's <i>partner</i> in the
conception and birth of her Son" (158-159). So is she a person or a
place? A throne (Isaiah 6:1) or a bush (Exodus 3:5)? An ark (Exodus
32:15) or a blossoming rod (Numbers 17:8)? A candelabrum (Exodus
25:30-40) or a manna-filled urn (Exodus 16:33)? The answer--as
Margaret Barker shows in what is undoubtedly the single most original
argument for the origins of Mary's cult that I have ever read and the
great exception to almost all of the work being done on Mary, whether
in Byzantium or in the West--is, of course, all of the above: she is
the Mother of God--more particularly, of the Son of God, the LORD
Jesus Christ--because she is Wisdom and these are her "types" because
she was and is the Lady of the Temple, the Tabernacle of God the Word
(Chapter 6).
It is easy to miss how earth-shattering this argument potentially is--
Mullett notes simply in her concluding remarks that Barker is one of
those working in the field who "look backwards, to the origins of the
Virgin's imagery in Wisdom literature" (282). But the argument here
is not simply that later liturgists, hymnographers, storytellers, and
homilists drew upon Wisdom literature as a source for their images of
the Virgin; this much we already knew, even in the West. Rather, it
is that, when later liturgists, hymnographers, storytellers, and
homilists drew upon this literature as a source for their images of
the Virgin, they were doing so <i>not</i> so as to "fill in the gaps"
purportedly left by the Gospels, much less so as to invent (or
imagine) the Virgin--"historically" (as most modern critics would have
it) simply a young peasant girl of Nazareth--as a figure of devotion.
Nor was the Virgin invented (or co-opted) simply as a theological
proof. In Barker's argument, Mary was not invented at all--at least,
not by the early Christians. She was <i>remembered</i>, much as her
Son was remembered as the LORD, the Son of God Most High, to whom she,
as <i>the</i> Virgin prophesied by Isaiah (7:14, the definite article
is significant), was expected to give birth.
This is not the place to rehearse all of Barker's argument in detail;
she herself has a full-length study in progress, the first volume of
which, <i>The Mother of the Lord: The Lady in the Temple</i> is
scheduled for publication this fall. A brief sketch of her argument
will of necessity suffice to suggest its scope. In Barker's reading
of the scriptures (both those included in present-day Christian and
rabbinic bibles and those accepted by the early Christians but
subsequently forgotten or suppressed), the earliest Christians were
Jews steeped in the traditions--and memories--of the worship of the
temple as it was before King Josiah's famous seventh-century BC
Deuteronomic reform (2 Kings 23). This worship was focused on the
temple as the representation of creation, itself divided by a veil
into the visible (created, material) and invisible (uncreated,
heavenly) worlds. The temple was served by priests "after the order
of Melchizedek" (Psalm 109/110:4; cf. Hebrews 5:6), while the Davidic
kings themselves, once anointed, were seen as "transformed by their
anointing and enthronement into sons of God, into the human presence
of Yahweh" (93)--that is, the LORD. Nor was the LORD, the Son of God
Most High, alone in his temple: his Mother was with him there, too.
The earliest Christians remembered her as a woman clothed with the
sun, crowned with stars, with the moon under her feet, who gave birth
to a male child who was to rule all the nations (Revelation 12:1-2),
as a bride, clothed in fine linen (the garment worn by the priests as
they stood before the LORD in the holy of holies) (Revelation 19:8),
and as a bejeweled city (Revelation 12:9-14). This bride, mother of
her son, was the queen of heaven for whom the women of Jerusalem once
burned incense, poured out libations, and baked cakes "bearing her
image" (Jeremiah 44:15-19); she was Miriam, ancestress of the royal
house, the mother of the kings of Jerusalem (<i>Exodus Rabbah</i>
XLVIII.4, cited 97). She was Wisdom, the tree of life (Proverbs
3:18), whom Solomon sought as his bride (Wisdom 9:2), who was with the
LORD as he brought all things into creation (Proverbs 8:22). And she
was (in Barker's words) "the lady [who] was the genius of Jerusalem"
(106). She was also expelled from the temple, along with the anointed
kings, her cakes, and her candelabra-trees, in the course of King
Josiah's "reforms" (cf. 2 Kings 23:6-7, on the destruction of the
Asherah). And yet, she, like her Son, was destined to return--or so
at least those who came to call themselves Christians (i.e. "little
anointed ones") believed.
If Barker is right (as I think she is), this argument changes
<i>everything</i> about the way in which we see what we have typically
called the "development" of the cult of the Virgin. It did not
"develop"--at least, not in the sense of being invented out of whole
cloth (or purported Greco-Roman precedent) in order to satisfy the
curiosity of those who wanted to know more about the woman they
imagined having given birth to their Savior. Rather, like the temple
priesthood itself in the person of Christ ("[our] great high priest,"
as Hebrews 4:14 puts it), it was <i>restored</i>. It was not just
that Jesus as the God-man needed a human mother; it was that the LORD
needed his Mother in order to be the LORD. Christianity would not
<i>be</i> Christianity without her. It is for this reason that she
appeared in the Gospels as she does (<i>pace</i> those who would
insist that they say "so little" about her); likewise, it is for this
reason that she was remembered in the <i>Protoevangelium</i> as having
spent her childhood living in temple and as being one of the maidens
chosen to weave the veil. The question is not whether "the historical
Mary" (who nevertheless most certainly existed, much as her son) in
fact did these things; whoever she was, she, insofar as she was Mother
of her Son, was always already both human and divine--the living
temple (as Germanos of Constantinople put it) containing the life-
giving bread (176). Perhaps, just perhaps, this is the reason that
she was hailed as the protectress (or genius?) of the city whose
greatest church was dedicated, ambiguously enough, to Hagia Sophia,
Holy Wisdom. Following Barker, we now at least know the right
questions to ask about how her cult developed in the way that it did.
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