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By Michele Jennings

It’s mid-August, which means we in the Marian Library and across UD’s campus are anticipating a day off. While we are observing the Solemnity of the Assumption on Aug. 15, people in the Orthodox tradition will be celebrating an equivalent feast: the Dormition of the Theotokos.

Theotokos, Greek for “god-bearer,” is an Orthodox designation for the Virgin Mary, and “dormition” offers a response to the question, “Whatever happened to Mary?” In Chapter 1 of Acts of the Apostles, we learn that after the Resurrection, Mary remains in the company of the apostles. According to Orthodox tradition, Mary then died, or “fell asleep” (hence the term “dormition”), before she was assumed, body and soul, into heaven. In Catholic dogma, the Assumption is somewhat more narrow, being focused primarily on what happened after her death. 

In a reproduction of a Russian icon from the Marian Library’s Eastern Church art and ephemera collection, Mary’s body lies on a bier with arms crossed. The 12 apostles surround her, and the figure of Jesus stands in an almond-shaped mandorla overlooking her body. He is enrobed in gold and holds the figure of a swaddled baby, representing Mary’s soul. At the top of the composition, time is compressed as we see Mary already enthroned in heaven and flanked by angels.

Apocryphal writings describing the end of Mary’s life and her assumption date back to the first few centuries of the church. An early such narrative that includes a long description of the Dormition and Assumption is the Book of Mary’s Repose, which now exists in its entirety only in a translation in Ge’ez*, or Classical Ethiopic, from the 14th or 15th century, though the oldest fragments of the text are in Syriac and date to the fifth century. After the Council of Ephesus in 431, veneration of Mary greatly expanded in everyday devotional practices, and depictions of the death of Mary entered the canon of religious art by the medieval period. Over time, Catholic art more frequently depicted Mary’s Assumption and Coronation; one example is Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin.

While belief in the Dormition and the Assumption of Mary was widely held in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches for centuries, the Assumption was only enshrined in Catholic dogma in 1950. Pope Pius XII’s apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus decreed that “the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” 

Further Reading

Shoemaker, Stephen J. Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. https://flyers.udayton.edu/record=b2095941~S0. 

Shoemaker, Stephen J. Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. https://flyers.udayton.edu/record=b4061282~S0. 

Pope Pius XII. Munificentissimus Deus [Apostolic Constitution Defining the Dogma of the Assumption]. The Holy See, November 1, 1950. https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html. 

*To see a manuscript written in Ge’ez from the Marian Library’s collections, take a look at this Dāwit, or psalter.

— Michele Jennings is an assistant professor and special collections instruction librarian in the Marian Library.