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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Dear Marjorie, On Tuesday, July 26, 2011, at 1:19 pm, you wrote: > Two queries: > "An expandable image of an eighth-century portrait of A. from Faras in > Lower Nubia" > This image shows A with her finger on her lips as if to command > silence. I've never seen such a pose on Anna. Any explanation? I have > a dictionary of gestures and their meaning - elsewhere. I don't know what the explanation is but a quick Google search for <"St Anne" silence> produced the information that Eirini Panou was to have spoken on this very topic at a spring 2011 conference on Byzantine studies. See: http://tinyurl.com/3mllyyx Eirini Panou's personal web page <http://birmingham.academia.edu/EiriniPanou> gives an e-mail address for her. > Later you refer to the "dormition" of A. I thought this term referred > only to Mary's passage from this world. You thought wrongly. To verify/falsify the hypothesis that the term "dormition" is, in Christian contexts at least, used only of Mary, one could reasonably construct a Google search for "dormition of St" or "dormition of saint" and then scrutinize the results. These would soon reveal other examples, usually from Orthodox contexts, e.g. the "dormition of St. John the Theologian" or the "dormition of St. Nicholas". "Dormition" of course strictly means no more than "falling asleep" but in Orthodox practice it refers to the peaceful passing away of a member of the faithful, as in the common obituary phrase "fell asleep in the Lord". Eastern-rite contexts are readily inferrable from both of my uses of "dormition" in respect of St. Anne: "In the East J. and A. have been traditionally celebrated on 9. September, with a separate feast of the Dormition of A. occurring on 25. July." and "A.'s dormition as depicted in the July Calendar and the portraits of J. and A. in the September Calendar in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:" For the term's use to describe scenes of the death of a saint, see (e.g.) the explanation of "dormition" in this page from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://tinyurl.com/45yvov5 > Is there a tradition that A > also was (semi-, partially, somewhat, totally) assumed into heaven or > do I not know the meaning of the term, a not unheard-of possibility? I'm not aware of such a tradition. Needless to say, not everyone who falls asleep in the Lord is thought to have been assumed bodily into heaven. Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html