st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

130 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
by Pope Sergius I., in 695. The growth of legendary
fancies which led to that of the Assumption 1 was
gradual and involved in much obscurity. The words
of Symeon in St. Luke ii., 35, Yea, a sword shall
pierce through thy own soul also, were understood by
some at a very early period to imply that the Virgin
Mary was to suffer martyrdom. Origen argued against
this notion ; pointing out that a material sword does
not pierce the soul, but the body. Then, the very
silence of Scripture respecting her end caused various
legends to spring up. As early as the time of Epiphanius
some held this silence to be a warrant for sup
posing that she had never really died, but had been
taken to God, as Elias was. She was the Woman in
the Apocalypse, pursued by the Dragon, to whom were
given the wings of an eagle, that she should flee into
the wilderness and escape him. A later form of the
legend was that she had been buried in the valley of
Jehoshaphat, and afterwards caught up into heaven.
Gregory of Tours, in the sixth century, gave cur
rency to a more circumstantial account, in which the
apostles were said to have been summoned by a
miraculous call from their various scenes of labour,
to be present at the bedside of the Virgin on the eve
of her departure. This story, by whomsoever in
vented, is related most fully and minutely by John
of Damascus, or at any rate by the author of the
The term assumptio is used of the death of saints, with
out implying anything miraculous." Robertson: "Hist, of
the Christian Church," vol. ii., p. 232 n. The statements in
the text are based almost entirely on the authorities quoted by
Gieseler and Robertson.