The Reception of the Virgin

in Byzantium
Marian Narratives in Texts and Images
Edited by
Thomas Arentzen and Mary B. Cunningham
 THE STORY OF AN EDITION
Antoine Wenger and
John Geometres’ Life of the Virgin Mary

fr maximos constas

ohn Geometres (ca. 935/40–1000) flourished in Constantinople

during the second half of the tenth century, counting among his
contemporaries Symeon Metaphrastes (d. ca. 1000), Symeon
the New Theologian (949–1022), Athanasios of Athos (ca. 925/30–
ca. 1001), and Leo the Deacon (ca. 950–1000).1 Geometres was the poet
laureate of his day and a precursor of the Byzantine literary renaissance
of the eleventh century.2 His brilliant career at the imperial court came
to an end when he fell out of favour under Basil II (on or around 985),
after which he is said to have become a monk.3 He henceforth devoted

1 For recent biographical studies, see M.D. Lauxtermann, ‘John Geometres: Poet and
Soldier’, Byzantion 68 (1998): 356–80; E.M. von Opstall, Jean Géomètre. Poèmes en hexamètres et en
distiques élégaiques (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 3–19.
2 According to M.D. Lauxtermann, ‘Byzantine Poetry and the Paradox of Basil II’s reign’ in
P. Magdalino (ed.), Byzantium in the Year 1000 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 212: ‘Whatever
seems new in Mauropous, Psellos, and Christopher Mitylenaios already pre-existed, albeit
in statu nascendi, in the poetry of Geometres.’ For a catalogue of his works, see Opstall, Jean
Géomètre, 15–17.
3 Apparently at the monastery of Kyros in Constantinople, as suggested by his surname,
Kyriotes, and the epigram he produced on the monastery’s main church, which was
dedicated to the Mother of God; cf. Lauxtermann, ‘Poet and Soldier’, 358–9; and Opstall, Jean
Géomètre, 326–39. P. Magdalino, ‘John Geometres, the Church of ta Kyrou, and the Kyriotai’ in
T. Shawcross and I. Toth (eds.), Reading Byzantium: Festschrift for Elizabeth Jeffreys (Cambridge
University Press, 2018); and P. Magdalino, ‘Cultural Change? The Context of Byzantine Poetry
from Geometres to Prodromos’ in F. Bernard and K. Demoen (eds.), Poetry and its Contexts in
Eleventh-Century Byzantium (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), 35–6, expresses
doubt that Geometres was a monk at the Theotokos tou Kyrou, but nevertheless admits that
he had a clear association with that church.

3
4 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

his considerable literary gifts to ecclesiastical poetry, biblical

commentaries,4 a metaphrasis of the biblical odes,5 poems on various
saints and icons, epigrams and scholia on the writings of the Church
Fathers,6 a poetical compendium of the ascetic life called ‘Paradise’,7
and orations on the great feasts of the Byzantine church, including a
lengthy oration on the Annunciation.8 Among the festal orations is a
homiletic treatise written for the feast of the Dormition, which is the
focus of this paper. The work remains unpublished, except for a portion
that was edited in 1955 by Antoine Wenger, whose efforts to edit the
entire work will be discussed in detail below.9

4 Around 50 excerpts attributed to Geometres are included in the Catena on Luke by

Niketas of Heracleia, compiled ca. 1080, on which, see: C. Krikones, Συναγωγὴ πατέρων εἰς
τὸ κατὰ Λουκὰν Εὐαγγέλιον ὑπὸ Νικήτα Ἡρακλέως (κατὰ κώδικα Ἰβήρων 371) (Thessalonike:
Center for Byzantine Studies, 1976). This has led to the mistaken notion that Geometres wrote
scholia on the Gospel of Luke (cf. Opstall, Jean Géomètre, 17, no. 12, and pp. 90, 92). However,
the excerpts cited by Niketas are taken from Geometres’ Oration on the Annunciation and his
Life of the Virgin Mary. Niketas likewise included excerpts from The Life of the Virgin by Symeon
Metaphrastes, and numerous excerpts from the genuine works of Maximos the Confessor,
but there are no citations from Ps.-Maximos, Life of the Virgin Mary.
5 Recently edited by M. de Groote, ‘Joannes Geometres’ Metaphrasis of the Odes: Critical
Edition’, GRBS 44 (2004): 375–410; cf. de Groote, ‘The Paraphrasis of Joannes Geometres
Metaphrasis of the Odes’, GRBS 43 (2002–3): 267–304.
6 Especially Gregory of Nazianzus, on whom he wrote an epigram, a panegyric, and
commentaries on three of his orations; cf. Opstall, Jean Géomètre, 17, no. 11, and pp. 148–50; and
K. Demoen and E.M. van Opstall, ‘One for the Road: John Geometres, Reader and Imitator of
Gregory Nazianzen’s Poems’ in A. Schmidt (ed.), Studia Nazianzenica II (Turnhout: Brepols,
2010), 223–48. For his scholion on John of Damascus, see R. Maisano, ‘Uno Scolio di Giovanni
Geometra a Giovanni Damasceno’ in P. Laveglia (ed.), Studi salernitani in memoria di Raffaele
Cantarella (Salerno: University of Salerno, 1981): 493–553.
7 Available in PG 106, 867–90; cf. P. Speck, ‘Zur Datierung des sogenannten Paradeisos’,
BZ 58 (1965): 333–6; and B. Isebaert and K. Demoen, ‘John Geometres and the Παράδεισος: A
New Editorial Project’ in W. Hörandner and M. Grünbart (eds.), L’Épistolographie et la poésie
épigrammatique. Actes de la 16e Table ronde du XXe Congrès international des Études byzantines
(Paris: Collège de France, 2003), 139–51. The poems are based largely on material in the
Apophthegmata Patrum (CPG 5560–615).
8 The oration on the Annunciation is available in PG 106, 812–48. Geometres also wrote
five hymns to the Virgin, which are available in PG 106, 853–68; cf. V. Laurent, ‘Les poésies
marials de Jean Kyriotès Géomètre’, EO 31 (1932): 117–20; J. Sadjak, Joannes Kyriotis Geometrae
Hymni in SS. Deiparam (Poznan: Sumptibus Societatis Litterarum Posnaniensis, 1931). While
Geometres’ religious writings are normally assigned to the period after his monastic tonsure,
there is no reason to believe that some were not written while he was still a layman.
9 On Wenger, cf. Albert Failler, ‘Antoine Wenger (1919–2009)’, REB 68 (2010): 321–6.
constas: the story of an edition 5

The oration, often referred to as the Life of the Virgin Mary,10

recounts the entire life of the Virgin, beginning with her ancestry
and ending with her death, along with an account of the transfer of
her garments to Constantinople by Galbius and Candidus during the
reign of Leo I (sed. 457–74). The work concludes with elaborate praises
and prayers of thanksgiving to Christ and the Mother of God.11 The
material is presented in chronological order and organised around the
great Marian feasts of the Byzantine church (as well as the Dominical
feasts marking those events at which the Virgin was present, such as
the Crucifixion). Throughout the oration, Geometres makes frequent
references to ‘today’, ‘now’, ‘today’s feast’, and the ‘feast we are now
celebrating’, but the sheer length of the work – which runs to nearly
50,000 words – makes it unlikely that it was actually read in its entirety
at a feast or vigil of the Dormition. Instead, it may have been originally
delivered in a shorter form and later revised and expanded, which
might perhaps account for the author’s references to his ‘study’ of
earlier Marian literature and to his oration as a ‘written’ work.12 To be
sure, this hagiographical turn is consistent with literary trends in the
tenth century, a period dominated by interest in the Lives of the saints,
including heightened interest in the biography of the Mother of God.13
Based on internal evidence, the Life may have been written sometime
between the years 987–9.14
10 As noted by Jugie, La mort et l’Assomption, 317, n. 1 (cited below, n. 15): ‘Ce discours de Jean
est très long et constitue une veritable Vie de la Vierge.’
11 Wenger, L’Assomption (cited below, n. 15), 394–6 (= transfer of relics); 406–14 (= prayer).
12 Lauxtermann, ‘Poet and Soldier’, 363, contends that the Life is a collection of separate
homilies on the Virgin, but this is not correct.
13 See, for example, Symeon Metaphrastes’ compilation of the Menologion; cf.
C. Høgel, Symeon Metaphrastes: Rewriting and Canonization (Copenhagen: Museum
of Tusculanum Press, 2002); idem, ‘Symeon Metaphrastes and the Metaphrastic
Movement’ in S. Efthymiades (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine
Hagiography, II: Genres and Contexts (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014),
181–208; S. C. Mimouni, Les traditions anciennes sur la Dormition et l’Assomption de Marie
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 75, who correctly notes that the middle Byzantine
Lives of the Virgin are a literary genre ‘somewhere between hagiography and
homiletics’.
14 In the Life’s closing prayer to the Mother of God, Geometres asks for deliverance from
the bloody civil wars, turmoil, and horrifying events witnessed in the capital, which Wenger,
6 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

Antoine Wenger and the Life of the Virgin

As mentioned above, the Greek text of John Geometres’ Life of the Virgin
Mary remains unedited, except for the final section concerning the
Dormition, which was published with a French translation in 1955
by the French Assumptionist scholar Antoine Wenger (1919–2009).15
Wenger’s ongoing work on the Life, including his efforts to edit and
translate the entire Greek text, continued to occupy him over the next
thirty years. It is a story not without interest, which will be told in what
follows based on letters and documents recently found in Wenger’s
archive.16
For the period covering 28 July 1963 through February 1988, the
archive contains 49 items relative to Wenger’s work on Geometres, most
of which are letters addressed to leading scholars and Mariologists,
including François Halkin, René Laurentin, Claude Mondésert, Carlo
Balic, Daniel Stiernon, and Michel-Jean van Esbroeck. Other items
include letters to various publishing houses (e.g., Éditions Grasset,
Sources Chrétiennes, Collection Théophanie) and related institutions
(the Société des Bollandistes, the Maison St. Bellarmin, the University
of Louvain, the Pontifical Marian Academy, and the Vatican Library).
L’Assomption (cited below, n. 15), 193, suggests may be a reference to the second rebellion of
Bardas Phokas, who proclaimed himself emperor and marched on Constantinople and its
surrounding territories from 15 August 987 until his death on 13 April 989; cf. Leo the Deacon,
History 10.9 (trans. A.-M. Talbot and D.F. Sullivan [Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2005],
215–17).
15 A. Wenger, L’Assomption de la T.S. Vierge dans la tradition byzantine du VIe au Xe siècle. Études
et documents (Paris: Institut Français d’études byzantines, 1955), 185–201 (= commentary); 364–
415 (= text, i.e., Vat. gr. 504, fols. 190v–194v, which Wenger collated with the work’s other primary
witness, the thirteenth-century codex Paris. gr. 215). Wenger notes (ibid., 189) that Martin
Jugie had ‘earlier proposed to edit and publish the text, but abandoned the idea owing to
more urgent projects’, although Jugie did manage to produce a study of the work containing
extensive extracts from it: M. Jugie, La mort et l’Assomption de la Sainte Vierge. Etude historico-
doctrinale, ST 114 (Rome: Vatican City, 1944), 316–20, which Wenger reviewed in REB 7 (1949):
244–5.
16 I am grateful to my colleague Vassa Kontouma, director of the Institut français
d’études byzantines, who retrieved these items for me from Wenger’s archives, housed at
the Assumptionist House in Paris (Denfert-Rochereau). A debt of gratitude is owed to Sarah
Horton, who transcribed Halkin’s hand-written notes to Wenger; and to Max Ramseyer, who
also translated a number of documents.
constas: the story of an edition 7

It is worth noting that, during the early part of this period, Wenger,
in addition to his scholarly activities, was editor-in-chief of the
prominent French Roman Catholic newspaper, La Croix, reporting
on events taking place at the Second Vatican Council (October 1962–
December 1965).17
In general terms, it is evident that Wenger’s interest in editing the
full text of the Life of the Virgin by John Geometres arose in the course of
working on his book on the Assumption, which contained a twenty-six-
page extract from the Greek text of the Life. The project, however, ran
into trouble when, at some point no later than the early 1960s, Wenger
became aware of the Georgian Life of the Virgin by Ps.-Maximos, the Greek
original of which was known, he believed, to Geometres. Wenger’s
inability to read Georgian, along with his various other commitments
(including a trip to China in 1965), at times led him to question the
viability of the project, or to consider the possibility of publishing only
a French translation of the Life based on the best Greek manuscripts.
In the end, he produced a transcription of Vaticanus graecus 504 (more
on which below), along with a French translation, although neither
was ever published. In the early 1980s, Wenger learned that Michel-
Jean van Esbroeck (1934–2003) was working on an edition of the
Georgian Life,18 and van Esbroeck subsequently informed Wenger that,
in addition to his work on Ps.-Maximos, he was also completing work
on a Greek edition of Geometres’ Life of the Virgin. In response, Wenger
surrendered the project to van Esbroeck, who assured him that the
edition would be published within two years. This is where the trail
17 Wenger was the only journalist admitted to the council’s sessions; cf. his Chronique de
Vatican II, 4 vols. (Paris: Centurion, 1963–6).
18 M.-J. van Esbroeck, Maxime le Confesseur, Vie de la Vierge, CSCO 479, Scriptores Iberici
21–2 (Leuven: Peeters, 1986); English translation by S.J. Shoemaker, Maximus the Confessor,
The Life of the Virgin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012). Attempts by both
van Esbroeck and Shoemaker to ascribe this work either to Maximos the Confessor or to the
seventh century more generally have not been accepted by scholars; Shoemaker’s arguments
in particular have been convincingly refuted by P. Booth, ‘On the Life of the Virgin Attributed
to Maximus the Confessor’, JTS 66 (2015): 149–203; cf. Shoemaker’s response, ‘The (Pseudo?-)
Maximus Life of the Virgin and the Byzantine Marian Tradition’, JTS 67 (2016): 115–42.
8 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

ends, since van Esbroeck, though he was to live for another eighteen
years, did not publish the Life of the Virgin by John Geometres.
Against this general background, we may now turn to some
particular items contained within the archive. In a series of eight
letters written from 29 April 1965 through 16 July 1965, Wenger noted
his interest in editing the Life by Geometres to the Bollandist scholar
François Halkin (d. 1988), from whom he requested a copy of Balthasar
Cordier’s (d. 1650) transcription of the Greek text of the Life contained
in Genuensis Urbani graecus 32, along with Cordier’s Latin translation
of the same.19 In the meantime, Wenger wrote to the Vatican Library
(6 May 1965) and ordered a photocopy of the early twelfth-century
manuscript, Vaticanus graecus 504, fols. 173v–194v, which is the text’s
principal witness.20
On 17 May 1965, Wenger wrote to the Franciscan Mariologist Carlo
Balic (d. 1977), founder and president of the Pontifical Academy of
Mary, who was influential in the proclamation of the dogma of the
Assumption (November 1950). Wenger stated that the ‘Marian theology
of John Geometres is undoubtedly one of the most profound syntheses
that the Christian East has left us’,21 and spoke of the need for a ‘careful
translation of the work’, along with a commentary containing ‘those
Greek passages that are doctrinally significant’. Wenger therefore
proposed a book of 200–500 pages for publication in Balic’s ‘Bibliotheca
Assumptionis’, containing a fifty-page introduction, a detailed study
19 Cordier’s transcription and translation (= Bibliotheca Bollandiana 196, fols. 59–182v) is
catalogued in C. van de Vorst and H. Delehaye, Catalogus codicum hagiographicum graecorum
Germaniae, Belgii, Angliae, Subsidia hagiographica 13 (Brussels, 1913; repr. 1968), 242, no. 2.
The text of the Life in Genuensis Urbani gr. 32, fols. 242–309v, dated to the fourteenth century,
is catalogued in: A.C. Palau, Catalogo dei manoscritti greci della Biblioteca Franzoniana (Genova)
(Urbani 21–40) (Rome: Academia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1996), no. 29, 123–4.
20 The manuscript has been catalogued by R. Devreesse, Codices Vaticani Graeci, vol. 2:
Codices 330–603 (Rome: Vatican Library, 1937), 346, no. 12. As noted by Wenger, L’Assomption, 186,
Devreesse’s catalogue entry mistakenly divides the work into two separate orations.
21 Wenger had already said as much in L’Assomption, 188: ‘Cette Vie de Marie mériterait
grandement d’être publiée. On peut dire qu’au point de vue théologique, elle est la première
synthèse mariale byzantine faite par un home qui est aussi profound théologien qu’il est fin
lettré.’
constas: the story of an edition 9

of Geometres’ Marian theology, and an annotated French translation

of the Greek text.
Shortly afterwards, on 26 May 1965, Wenger wrote to Claude
Mondésert (d. 1990), a co-founder and then director of the series
Sources Chrétiennes. In the course of discussing a possible edition of a
Marian text by the late Byzantine writer Philotheos of Constantinople,22
Wenger expressed his reservations about publishing the Greek text
of the Life of the Virgin Mary by Geometres, but remained committed
to working on a French translation with commentary. Mondésert
responded on 4 June, noting that Wenger had already been at work
on the Life for two years, adding that, if Wenger were to edit the Greek
text, he would be happy to publish it in the series Sources Chrétiennes,
along with Wenger’s introduction, French translation, and notes.
In a letter to Gérard Garitte (d. 1992), written on 18 June 1965,
Wenger notes that he had become increasingly preoccupied with a
comparative study of the various contemporary Lives of the Virgin,
that is, those by Epiphanios the Monk, Symeon Metaphrastes, and Ps.-
Maximos, and felt that a study of these writings was necessary before
continuing with the edition of Geometres. Realizing that the Life by
Ps.-Maximos was extant only in Georgian – a language Wenger was
unable to read – he asked Garitte, a specialist in Georgian ecclesiastical
literature, for information about the Georgian manuscripts. Garitte
responded on 23 June with a detailed letter containing information
about these manuscripts and related secondary studies. In July,
however, Wenger’s work was interrupted by a trip to China.
Upon his return, Wenger resumed work on Geometres for Sources
Chrétiennes, and in May of 1966, he recruited M. L. Guillaumin (an
editorial assistant at this press) to transcribe the Vatican manuscript.23
22 Presumably Philotheos Kokkinos, Homily on the Dormition of the Theotokos, ed. B.S.
Psevtogas, ‘Φιλοθέου Κοκκίνου πατριάρχη Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, εἰς τὴν κοίμησιν τῆς
Θεοτόκου’, Ἐπιστημονικὴ Ἐπετηρίδα Θεολογικῆς Σχολῆς Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκης 27
(1982): 5–130.
23 After transcribing the first few folio pages, Guillaumin wrote to Wenger on 6 November
1966 stating that other responsibilities prevented her from any further work on the
transcription.
10 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

Around the same time, Wenger had learned from Mondésert that
Marcel Jacob, who having two years earlier begun work on an edition
of the Life, had recently turned the project over to Alexis Smets. On 15
November 1966, Wenger wrote to Smets, who responded on 7 January
1967. Smets had not made significant progress on the edition – to
which in any case he does not appear to have been overwhelmingly
committed – and gladly relinquished any further claim to it. In
addition, he provided Wenger with a copy of the Genoa manuscript.
By the end of the 1960s, Wenger had begun teaching at the Catholic
University of Strasbourg (1969–1973), after which he served as an
Ecclesiastical Counsellor of the Embassy of France to the Vatican (1973–
83). During this period, it is not clear how his work on the edition and
translation was progressing, if at all. By 1985, Wenger became aware
that Michel-Jean van Esbroeck, a Belgian Bollandist and Orientalist,
was working on an edition of the Georgian Life ascribed to Maximos
the Confessor, and arranged to meet with van Esbroeck in Rome on 4
October 1985. It was then that van Esbroeck told Wenger that he too was
preparing an edition of Geometres’ Life of the Virgin, although Wenger
may have already known this, since at their meeting he gave van
Esbroeck his photocopy and transcription of the Vatican manuscript,
along with his photocopy of the Genoa manuscript. Wenger recorded
his thoughts about this meeting in a kind of diary or journal entry
written later that same day. On the following day, 5 October 1985,
Wenger wrote a letter to van Esbroeck, expressing his doubts about
the attribution of the Georgian Life to Maximos the Confessor. In
addition, he asked van Esbroeck to return the transcription of the
Vatican manuscript (which he promised to photocopy and return) for
his ongoing work on the French translation.
Van Esbroeck responded in a letter dated 19 October, but wrote
mostly about his ongoing work on the Georgian text of Ps.-Maximos.
It is only in the letter’s final paragraph that van Esbroeck revealed that
he had yet to type up the Greek text, and had not yet incorporated the
constas: the story of an edition 11

variant readings from the Genoa manuscript. It seems, however, that

van Esbroeck completed this task at a later point, and gave Wenger
a copy of the Greek text, which is now in the Wenger archive.24 In a
statement (without addressee) written on 20 February 1988, Wenger
notes that he and van Esbroeck had met earlier on that same day.
According to Wenger, van Esbroeck claimed that the Life by Geometres
was little more than a variant of the Life by Ps.-Maximos, but nonetheless
maintained his interest in publishing the Greek text, assuring Wenger
that it would appear within two years. At this, Wenger graciously, if
reluctantly, renounced his claim to the project, expressing a degree of
sorrow for parting company with a work that had preoccupied him for
more than thirty years. However, and as stated above, at the time of his
death in 2003, van Esbroeck had not realised his promise to publish
the Life of the Virgin by John Geometres.
Early in 2012, Mary Cunningham became interested in the Life,
and began working with Vaticanus graecus 504. Not long afterwards,
she kindly invited the present writer to take over the project. After
collecting the manuscripts and collating about half of the text (a task
made necessary by various problems and inadequacies in the Greek
text established by van Esbroeck), I invited Christos Simelidis to
collaborate with me as co-editor, and I am thankful for his help in the
preparation of this article. Our aim is to produce a critical edition of
the Greek text, along with an English translation, introduction, and
commentary.

John Geometres and the Theotokos: theological considerations

The Life of the Virgin by John Geometres is considered a long missing
critical piece in a larger puzzle connecting early Marian writings –
e.g., the Protoevangelium and the Transitus Mariae literature – with later
24 That is, a typed collation of Vaticanus graecus 504, and Genuensis urbani 32 (see above, nn.
19–20), up to the account of the Dormition, which had already been edited by Wenger. The
Paris manuscript was not included in this collation, although van Esbroeck may have planned
to incorporate its variant readings at a later date.
12 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

works such as the Life of the Virgin by Epiphanios of Kallistratos (written

towards the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century),25
the ninth-century sermons of George of Nikomedia (active after ca.
860),26 the tenth-century Life of the Virgin by Symeon Metaphrastes (ca.
976–87),27 and the Life of the Virgin mistakenly attributed to Maximos
the Confessor. This latter work was almost certainly written, not in
the seventh century, but in the Middle Byzantine period, in close
proximity to the Lives by Geometres and Metaphrastes, and all three
share a number of common elements. One is therefore justified in
asking what factors encouraged the production of these Lives at more
or less the same time.
It seems to me that two factors merit particular attention: heightened
interest in hagiography, and heightened interest in the Mother of God,
both of which were characteristic features of the post-Iconoclastic
period. Renewed and indeed systematic interest in the Lives of the
saints was part of the larger response to Iconoclasm, a movement that
sought to suppress and destroy the theoretical and material culture of
devotion to the saints.28 Moreover, inasmuch as Iconophile thinking
had granted the Mother of God a central place in Christian theology
25 Edited by A. Dressel, Epiphanii monachi et presbyter edita et inedita (Paris and Leipzig:
Brockhaus and Avenarius, 1843), 13–44; and also available (in a slightly different recension) in
PG 120, 186–216. See Mary Cunningham’s chapter on this text in the present volume.
26 George’s Marian homilies are available in PG 100, 1336–504.
27 Symeon’s Life of the Virgin has been edited by V.V. Latyshev, Menologii anonymi
byzantini saeculi X quae supersunt fragmenta, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Nauk, 1912; repr.
Leipzig, 1970), 345–83. The Lament of the Theotokos ascribed to Symeon (PG 114, 209–17)
is the work of the twelfth-century writer Nikephoros Basilakes; for critical editions
of the Greek text, see W. Hörander, Der Prosarhythmus in der rhetorischen Literatur der
Byzantiner (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1981), 98–104; A. Pignani, Niceforo Basilace, Progimnasmi e monodie (Naples: Bibliopolis,
1983), 169–80.
28 On which, see N. Ševčenko, ‘Canon and Calendar: the Role of a Ninth-Century
Hymnographer in Shaping the Celebration of the Saints’ in Leslie Brubaker (ed.), Byzantium in
the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 101–14, esp. p. 113; repr. in Ševčenko,
The Celebration of the Saints in Byzantine Art and Liturgy (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2013). The same rise of interest in devotion to the saints is evident in the iconography of post-
Iconoclastic lead seals; on which, see: J. Cotsonis, ‘The Contribution of Byzantine Lead Seals
to the Study of the Cult of the Saints (6th–12th Centuries)’, Byzantion 75 (2005): 383–497.
constas: the story of an edition 13

and devotion, promoted through a growing cycle of Marian feasts, it

is not surprising that orthodox believers became increasingly curious
about the details of her life, which could only be satisfied by the kind
of large-scale biographies mentioned above.
In addition to these factors, it is important to remember that Iconoclasm
was not simply a debate about art, but a controversy concerning
the nature and consequences of the Incarnation, and thus it was an
extension of the Christological controversy into the domain of art. In
keeping with the new Christology, the iconography that was developed
in the wake of the Council of Nicaea (787) and the Restoration of Icons
(Constantinople, 843) highlighted the Virgin’s maternal relationship
to her child, which visually proclaimed the new emphasis on the
physical and spiritual connections between the incarnate Word and
his Mother.29 The icon of Mother and Child, together with the icon of
Christ, would henceforth forever remain united as a single confession
of faith in the Incarnation.30 And in response to those who sought to
remove the image of the Mother of God from the eyes and minds of
the faithful, and to ban her honour and veneration in the liturgy,31
29 Cf. I. Kalavrezou, ‘Images of the Mother: When the Virgin Mary became Meter Theou’,
DOP 44 (1990): 165–72; N. Tsironis, ‘The Mother of God in the Iconoclastic Controversy’ in
M. Vassilaki (ed.), Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (Athens: Benaki
Museum, 1999), 27–39; M. Vassilaki and N. Tsironis, ‘Representations of the Virgin and the
Association with the Passion of Christ’ in Mother of God, 456: ‘The direct association of the
Virgin with the Restoration of Icons demonstrates the manner in which she represented and
embodied iconophile arguments about and beliefs in the Incarnation.’
30 Already the second council of Nicaea affirmed: ‘We embrace the words of the Lord,
the apostles, and the prophets, through which we have been taught to praise and magnify
above all she who is literally and truly the Theotokos’ (ACO II.3.2, 484, lines 25–7). See also
the kontakion for the Feast of Orthodoxy, which proclaims: ‘The uncircumscribable Word
of the Father was circumscribed becoming flesh through you, Theotokos’ (Triodion [Athens:
Apostolike Diakonia, 2003], 309–10). This principle had already been stated by Germanos of
Constantinople in his Letter to John of Synada: ‘In the same manner we depict the likeness of His
all-pure Mother, showing that, while she was a woman according to nature … she nonetheless
conceived the invisible God in her womb’ (PG 98, 157D–161C).
31 According to the ninth-century writer George the Monk (Hamartolos)’s Chronicle 2.16,
Constantine V, in addition to denying the intercessory power of the saints, had forbidden
calling the Virgin ‘Theotokos’, likewise rejecting her capacity as an intercessor and mediator:
μηδὲ τῆς Μαρίας ἐπικαλείσθω τις πρεσβείαν, οὐ γὰρ δύναται βοηθεῖν τινι, μηδ᾽ αὗ πάλιν
Θεοτόκον αὐτὴν ὀνομαζέσθω (ed. C. de Boor, Georgii Monachi Chronicon [Leipzig: Teubner, 1904;
repr. 1978], 2:751, lines 8–10).
14 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

orthodox writers and artists lavishly praised her in richly articulated

literary and visual portraits. From this point of view, the Lives can be
seen as prose versions of Marian iconographic cycles, which from the
tenth and eleventh centuries would increasingly adorn the walls of
Byzantine churches.32
I would further argue that interest in the Virgin’s genealogy,
which is another prominent feature of the Lives, should also be seen
in light of the peculiarly Iconophile notion of the Incarnation.33 The
genealogies are not attempts to ennoble Mary as an isolated individual
by providing her with a Davidic pedigree, but rather to exalt her as the
prototype and consummation of human nature assumed by the Word
of God. Seen in this way, the genealogy is simply another witness to
and safeguard of the historical reality of the Incarnation.34 Geometres
states that the Virgin’s ancestry ‘contributes to, and is by no means
insignificant for her future conception and the divine economy of
salvation’, and that the ‘weaving together of the priestly and royal
lines’ was a kind of ‘universal blending’ from which would arise, ‘not
merely one who was priest and king, but God and man’.35
32 While abbreviated Marian iconographic cycles based on the Protevangelium
appear already in the fifth century, systematic cycles appear only in the tenth century,
coinciding with the appearance of the Lives; cf. X. Jacob, ‘La vie de Marie interpretée
par les artistes des églises rupestres de Cappadoce’, Cahiers de l’art medieval 6
(1971–3): 15–30. These same factors may also account for the detailed physical and
especially physiognomic descriptions of Christ and the Virgin found in the Lives, e.g.,
Epiphanios the Monk, Life of the Virgin (Dressel, 18, 29; PG 120, 192C–193B; 204C).
33 Cf. Epiphanios, Life of the Virgin 2 (Dressel, 15–16; PG 120, 189A–192A); Geometres, Life of
the Virgin 3 (Vat. gr. 504, fol. 173r); Ps.-Maximos, Life of the Virgin 3.
34 A.D. Kartsonis, Anastasis: The Making of an Image (Princeton University Press, 1986),
191–203, similarly notes that the inclusion of David and Solomon in the iconography of the
Resurrection was understood as a ‘reference to the incarnation of the Logos through the
Virgin’ through a ‘pictorial shorthand for Davidic ancestry’, affirming that the ‘royal house
of David is the vehicle of the incarnation’, offering ‘material proof of the humanity of Christ’,
and making the grouping of figures a kind of ‘family portrait’. Kartsonis also notes that this
iconography was ‘widespread throughout the Macedonian period’, i.e., during the lifetime of
Geometres.
35 Geometres, Life of the Virgin (Vat. gr. 504, fol. 173r); cf. Ps.-Maximos, Life of the Virgin 3. On
this point, the Lives are faithful to the genealogies of Mt 1:1–17 and Lk 3:23–38, which likewise
proclaim a Davidic ancestry for Jesus, which is affirmed in Rom 1:3 and 2 Tim 2:8, assumed in
constas: the story of an edition 15

Similarly, the pronounced emphasis that the Lives place on the

Virgin’s suffering, especially at the time of the passion and crucifixion,
is yet another theme characteristic of post-Iconoclastic theology.36
As has been well established, Iconophile theologians emphasised
the sufferings of Christ as a way to demonstrate the reality of his
humanity, which led to a corresponding emphasis on the sufferings
of his mother, who was the source of his humanity.37 This theme is
already prominent in the ninth-century stavrotheotokia of Joseph the
Hymnographer, extends through the tenth-century Lives of the Virgin,
is evident in the great Marian iconography of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, and was popularised in the Holy Friday Lamentations of the
late Byzantine period.38 The suffering of the human Mother was, as it
were, a mirror magnifying the suffering of her divine-human Son, and
in which the emotional and psychological aspects of divine suffering
could be explored and amplified without compromising the doctrine
of divine impassibility. It follows that the post-Iconoclastic emphasis
on the suffering of the Mother of God cannot be reduced simply to
a species of ‘affective piety’. In Byzantine theology, ‘suffering’ (πάθος,
τὸ παθητόν) signifies ‘passivity’ and denotes the universal potential
of human nature – exemplified by the Mother of God at the time of
the Incarnation and Crucifixion, and indeed throughout her whole
Mk 10:48 and implied in Acts 2:30 and Heb 7:14, all of which aim to highlight Christ’s relation
to both God and humanity.
36 Cf. Geometres, Life of the Virgin (Vat. gr. 504, fols. 184r–86v); Ps.-Maximos, Life of the
Virgin 80–1; Symeon Metaphrastes, Life of the Virgin (ed. Latyschev, 357, 363, 366–7); George of
Nikomedia, Homily on the Mother of God at the Cross (PG 100, 1457A–1489D); George of Nikomedia,
Homily on the Mother of God at the Tomb of Christ (PG 100, 1489D–1504D); the anonymous Christus
patiens (SC 149); and Nikephoros Basilakes, The Lament of the Theotokos. The Life by Epiphanios
does not emphasize the Virgin’s suffering.
37 This was a theological strategy used against the anti-Chalcedonians; cf. Anastasios of
Sinai, Hodegos 12.1 (CCSG 8:201–2); see also Vassilaki and Tsironis, ‘Representations of the
Virgin’; M. Constas, The Art of Seeing: Paradox and Perception in Orthodox Iconography (Alhambra:
Sebastian Press, 2014), 100–8, 121–8.
38 On which, see M. Constas, ‘Painting and Poetry in the Middle Byzantine Period: A
Bilateral Icon from Kastoria and the Stavrotheotokia of Joseph the Hymnographer’ in S. E.
J. Gerstel (ed.), Viewing Greece: Cultural and Political Agency in the Medieval and Early Modern
Mediterranean (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016): 12–32; and Constas, Art of Seeing, 121–6.
16 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

life – to ‘suffer the divine’.39 The resulting ‘identity in suffering’

between Mother and Child has often been misunderstood as making
Mary a ‘co-redeemer’ with Christ, or ontologically elevating her into
a ‘semi-divine being’.40 However it is simply an extension of the
logic of participation in the sufferings of Christ adumbrated in the
New Testament (cf. 2 Cor 4:10; Col 1:24; 1 Pet 4:13), culminating in the
Christomimetic martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 7), and continued in the
Passions of the early martyrs. The participation of the saints in the
sufferings of Christ is a mode of their assimilation to God, which is a
central feature of Eastern Orthodox anthropology and soteriology. In
the case of the Mother of God, the ‘imitation of Christ’ is a question of
degree, not kind.41
While the Middle Byzantine Lives of the Virgin are ostensibly
works of history or hagiography, those by Ps.-Maximos and John
Geometres are impressive for their strong theological content. To be
sure, Epiphanios of Kallistratos intentionally set out to produce a more
‘historical’ account, citing and critiquing his sources, from which,

39 On the fundamental place of passivity/suffering in the soul’s union with God, see
Maximos the Confessor, Amb. 7.11–12; Amb. 20.2 (DOML 1:89–92; 409–11); and Maximos,
Questions to Thalassios 22 (CCSG 7:137–43). For discussion, see A. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus
the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified (Oxford University Press, 2005), 144–64; 248–9; P.
Blowers, Maximus the Confessor and the Transfiguration of the World (Oxford University Press,
2016), 206–11; Constas, Art of Seeing, 124–8.
40 See, for example, J. Galot, ‘La plus ancienne affirmation de la corédemption mariale: Le
témoignage de Jean le Géomètre’, Recherches des science religieuse 45 (1957): 187–208; H. Graef,
Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 199. While some
Roman Catholic theologians carefully qualify Mary’s participation in the divine economy of
salvation (which began with her assent to become the Mother of God), the notion that ‘Mary’s
intense sufferings were amassed in such an interconnected way that was not only a proof of
her unshakeable faith, but also a contribution to the Redemption of all, and were mysteriously
and supernaturally fruitful for the Redemption of the world’ (Pope John Paul II, Apostolic
Letter, Salvifici Doloris 25), makes the redemptive work of Christ contingent on the emotional
response of a human being, and as such has no parallel in Byzantine theological thought.
41 See Maximos, Amb. 21.14–15 (DOML 1:441–45). The word ‘Theotokos’ already presupposes a
communicatio idiomatum or reciprocity between the human and the divine, a concept Maximos
extended to include the saints, so that the term perichoresis came to mean the permeation of
divine properties into human life and experience, which is the aim of the divine economy of
salvation; for discussion, see L. Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology
of Maximus the Confessor (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 22–36.
constas: the story of an edition 17

he tells us, he took only what was ‘certain and true’.42 Geometres, on
the other hand, whose work closely mirrors that by Ps.-Maximos, is
more theologian than historian. He is not content simply to recount
the facts of the Virgin’s life, but expands on those facts exegetically
and theologically, aided by his superior gifts as a writer and poet. If
Epiphanios detailed the outward, historical events comprising the
life of the Virgin, then Ps.-Maximos and Geometres can be said to
have provided those events with extended spiritual and theological
interpretations (in addition to expanding the historical narrative
itself). Ps.-Maximos may have been the first to undertake the task
of expansion and interpretation, followed by Geometres, who went
beyond Ps.-Maximos, not only in terms of language and rhetoric, but
also theologically, either by elaborating on the theological themes that
are also found in Ps.-Maximos, or by introducing new theological
themes and images. A comparison of their respective treatments of
the Virgin’s Entry into the Temple will serve to make this clear. 43
Ps.-Maximos recounts the traditional narrative of the Entry,
describing the Virgin’s parents taking her to the Temple at the age
of three, and dedicating her as an offering to God.44 At the moment
42 Epiphanios, Life of the Virgin (Dressel, 13–14; PG 120, 185–8). At the close of his survey,
Epiphanios admits to having used apocryphal works composed by heretics, but justifies such
usage by citing Basil, Homily on the Nativity of Christ (PG 31, 1469): ‘The magi, who were of a race
foreign to the covenants of God, were the first to be reckoned worthy of worshipping Christ,
because the testimonies of enemies are more trustworthy’ (Dressel, 14; PG 120, 188B). Ps.-
Maximos (followed by Symeon Metaphrastes) makes the same argument, but cites Gregory of
Nyssa: ‘And if we say some things from the apocryphal writings, this is true and without error,
and it is what has been accepted and confirmed by the above-mentioned Fathers. For so the
blessed Gregory of Nyssa says, “I have read in an apocryphal book that the father of the all-holy
Virgin Mary was reknowned for his observance of the Law and was famous for his charity”’
(trans. Shoemaker, 38, citing Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on the Nativity [GNO 10.2/3, p. 252, lines
1–2]); cf. Symeon, Life of the Virgin (Lyshatev, 348, lines 4–7).
43 The origins of the feast of the Entry remain obscure, although it was well established
by or shortly after the time of Germanos of Constantinople (sed. 715–30). The feast was
subsequently promoted by iconophile preachers and theologians, including Tarasios of
Constantinople, who presided over the Seventh Ecumenical council in 787, and whose homily
on the Entry is a masterpiece of iconophile Marian theology (PG 98, 1481–500); cf. M. B.
Cunningham, Wider Than Heaven: Eighth-Century Homilies on the Mother of God (Crestwood, NY:
SVS Press, 2008), 24–6.
44 Ps.-Maximos, Life of the Virgin 5.
18 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

of the Virgin’s actual entrance into the Temple, he notes that she is
escorted by other virgins, who ‘went before her with lamps’. These
virgin escorts are not mentioned by Epiphanios, although they
appear in the Protevangelium (chap. 7.4–5), and in the homilies on the
Entry by Germanos and Tarasios, who identify them with the virgins
mentioned in Psalm 44:15: ‘Virgins shall be brought to the King after
her; her companions shall be brought to You.’45 Ps.-Maximos likewise
associates the virgin escorts with Psalm 44:3–14, which he provides
with an extensive Marian exegesis.46 His interpretation of these
verses enables him to fill out the narrative with a number of details.
For example, he believes that the verse, ‘the queen stood at your right’
(Ps 44:10), was a prophecy ‘foretelling her location to the right of the
altar in the Holy of Holies’.47 Ps.-Maximos is aware that earlier writers
interpreted the ‘queen’ and ‘daughter’ of Psalm 44 as referring to the
Church, and not to the Virgin. The Marian interpretation, however,
increasingly came to predominate, and Ps.-Maximos would seem to
mark an important stage in this process.48

45 Germanos, On the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple I.5–6 (trans. Cunningham, Wider
Than Heaven, 150–2); Tarasios, On the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple (PG 98, 1481B;
1488CD). Note that in two ninth-century illuminated Psalters, whose iconographic programs
constitute a sustained polemic against the iconoclasts, Psalm 44 is illustrated by an image
of the Annunciation, flanked by the psalmist David (cf. above, n. 33); for discussion, see K.
Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters (Cambridge University Press,
1992), 64–5, and fig. 72. I am thankful to Joachim Cotsonis for this reference.
46 Ps.-Maximos, Life of the Virgin 5–9.
47 Ibid. 7.
48 Ibid. 6: ‘And even if some have interpreted these words as being about the Church, there
is nevertheless nothing that impedes understanding them as being about the holy Theotokos’
(trans. Shoemaker, 41). Among those patristic writers who interpret the psalm as a type of the
Church are: Clement, Strom. 6.11.92.1 (GCS 2, 478); Origen, Commentary on John 1.284 (SC 120,
204); Eusebius, Commentary on the Psalms (PG 23, 401); Athanasius, Expositions on the Psalms
(PG 27, 212); Cyril of Alexandria, On the Adoration and Worship of God in Spirit and Truth (PG 68,
137; 633); and Basil of Caesarea, On the Psalms (PG 29, 408). Athanasius, Letter to Marcellinus
(PG 27, 16; cf. ibid., 565) understands the psalm to refer to the Mother of God, but the wider
reception of this interpretation is not evident until Ps-Gregory Thaumaturgus, Homily on
the Annunciation (PG 10, 1153), written in the late sixth century, and Ps-Athanasius, Homily
on the Annunciation (PG 28, 937), written in the seventh or eighth century. The association of
the psalm with ascetic virgins likely served as a transition from the ecclesial to the Marian
constas: the story of an edition 19

Turning now to John Geometres, it is clear that, apart from some

significant differences, his work closely parallels the account of the
Entry found in Ps.-Maximos, including the Marian exegesis of Psalm
44. Having interpreted the Psalm, however, he embarks on a lengthy
digression, which he announces to his audience: ‘Rather than omit
anything of seemingly minor importance concerning the Mother of
God, and so appear to be doing major harm to those who love her
and her beauty, I will not at this juncture overlook what is timely and
appropriate to say. Let us hear, then, from the apocryphal writings,
and from the gleanings of others, because those who love their
sovereigns are not interested merely in extensive coverage of the great
things concerning them, but even in things that are seemingly small.’49
The ‘seemingly small things’ that Geometres proposes to discuss will
occupy him at considerable length, introducing material that is not
found in Ps.-Maximos, and doubling the length of his treatment of
the Entry. His aim is to address the inner qualities of the Virgin, that
is, her ‘interior beauty and the whole disposition of her spirit’, which
make her a ‘rule or standard for all human nature’. In what must be a
reference to the ‘apocryphal’ sources he mentioned at the outset, he
subsequently alludes to an analogy between the formation of Eve’s
body and the formation of Mary’s soul,50 but admits that the topic is
‘beyond reason and speech’, and consequently sets it aside.51
Continuing with a description of the Virgin’s virtuous qualities,
Geometres lists eleven superlatives, the last two of which, namely, ‘most
skilful and industrious’ (εὐτεχνοτάτη καὶ φιλεργοτάτη), he associates
with the ‘virtuous wife’ of Proverbs, a type of the Virgin whom Solomon
‘praised from afar’. Whereas Ps.-Maximos cites Proverbs 31:25–6, 29,
he uses these three verses merely to refer to the Virgin’s ‘cleverness in
interpretation; cf. John Chrysostom, On Virginity 6.2 (SC 125:110, lines 21–4).
49 John Geometres, Life of the Virgin (Vat. gr. 504, fol. 174r).
50 Although this may also be a reference to the Virgin’s work of spinning thread, noted
below.
51 John Geometres, Life of the Virgin (Vat. gr. 504, fol. 175r.).
20 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

speech’, her being ‘clothed in beauty’, and the surpassing nature of her
‘knowledge’. The ‘virtuous wife’ (Prov 31:10) as such is not mentioned
or cited, and neither is her skill at ‘spinning and weaving’, which is a
notable feature of the biblical text (Prov 31:13, 19, 22, 24). This omission
is significant, since the Virgin’s handwork was a key symbolic attribute
of the Theotokos in the Late Antique and Byzantine tradition.52
Geometres, on the other hand, offers a verse-by-verse commentary
on the whole of Proverbs 31:10–31, relating the external activities of
the proverbial good wife to the inner life of the Mother of God.53 Her
work with ‘wool and flax’ (Prov 31:13), for example, signifies reflection
on the ‘coarser, if pure, thoughts concerning the practical life, and the
more subtle thoughts concerning contemplation’.54 That she ‘arises at
night and provides food for her household’ (Prov 31:15) indicates her
impartation of ‘nourishing and contemplative thoughts to the house
of her soul’. That ‘her lamp does not go out at night’ (Prov 31:18) refers
to the ‘illumination of her intellect, or the principle that fulfils the
law, since the law is a lamp and a light’. The ‘hands’ that she ‘puts to
the distaff’ (Prov 31:19) symbolize the ‘practical power of the soul’, by
which she ‘weaves together a garment of virtue and the clothing of
faith’,55 and so on through the rest of the.
Geometres’ allegorical exegesis of the virtuous wife described
in Proverbs is largely indebted to ascetic writers such as Evagrius of
Pontus and Maximos the Confessor, in particular to Evagrius’ Scholia
on Proverbs. For Evagrius, the proverbial wife personifies the ascetic
soul or intellect engaged in a range of practical and contemplative
activities, an interpretation that finds linguistic and conceptual
52 See below, n. 59.
53 Epiphanios, Life of the Virgin, emphasizes Mary’s work spinning thread, noting that her
handwork with wool, linen, and silk and purple dyed cloth was admired by all, and that in
wisdom and understanding she was superior to all women of her generation, so that Solomon’s
words truly apply to her: ‘A virtuous woman is hard to find’ (Prov 31:10) (Dressel, 17; PG 120,
192C).
54 John Geometres, Life of the Virgin (Vat. gr. 504, fol. 175r).
55 Ibid.
constas: the story of an edition 21

parallels in Geometres. For instance, the ‘gathering of wool and flax’,

according to Evagrius, is ‘meditation on the principles of animate and
inanimate beings’, or ‘practical and natural principles’. Her ‘lamp’ is a
‘pure intellect filled with contemplation’. Her ‘spindle’ symbolises the
purified intellect, which ‘weaves together virtue with virtue’, or perhaps
is a ‘spoken word drawing out contemplation from the intellect’.56 The
‘garments’ she fashions are the ‘virtues and contemplations by which
the intellect is adorned’.57 That the ‘hand’ symbolises the ‘activity of the
practical life’, is a trope common to Evagrius and Maximos.58
Again, it is striking that Ps.-Maximos makes no mention of
the Virgin’s spinning of thread, which figures prominently in the
Protevangelium (chaps. 10.1–8; 11.4), and, from the fifth century, was a
popular theme in homiletical literature and iconography. According to
the Protevangelium, Mary was spinning purple thread for the veil of the
sanctuary when she was approached by the archangel Gabriel (cf. Lk
1:28). In the New Testament, the flesh of Christ – as if it were a sacred
curtain concealing his divinity – is directly identified with the veil of
the sanctuary (Heb 10:20), and this was undoubtedly the source of the
symbolism for the Protevangelium. The logic of the apocryphal Gospel
is elegant: if Christ’s flesh was derived exclusively from his mother,
then the veil symbolising that flesh can have been woven by no one
but her, and thus Mary’s distaff and thread became symbols of Christ’s
virginal conception and birth.59
56 Cf. the parallel formulation in Clement, Paed 3.10.49.5 line 3.
57 Evagrius, Scholia on Proverbs (SC 340, 462–72). Many of these same scholia were excerpted
in Prokopios of Gaza, Catena on Proverbs (CPG 7432), where Geometres could have had easy
access to them.
58 Cf. Evagrius, Scholia on Proverbs 203: ‘The practical virtues correspond to the hands’ (SC
340, 298); Scholia on Ecclesiastes 26: ‘The hands are a symbol of practical activity’ (SC 397, 102);
Maximos, Amb. 48.5: ‘The hands (of Christ the Lamb) shall be partaken of by those who carry
out the work of the commandments’ (DOML 2, 219); Questions to Thalassios 37.4: ‘The hand is
the activity of the intellect as it gropes for things in contemplation’ (CCSG 7, 251); Questions
and Doubts 1,68: ‘The hands are admittedly symbols of practice and activity’ (CCSG 10, 165).
59 For further discussion, see: N. Constas, ‘Weaving the Body of God: Proclus of
Constantinople, the Theotokos, and the Loom of the Flesh’, JECS 3 (1995): 169–94; and N.
Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2003), 315–58.
22 the reception of the virgin in byzantnium

Through a rhetorical inclusio, repeating the same language he used

to open this digression, Geometres brings the digression to a close.
As he returns to the place where Ps.-Maximos left off, he signals his
return, saying: ‘Even though these things were uttered by way of a
digression, they are by no means lacking in pleasure and benefits for
those who are more diligent in their learning and lovers of beauty.’60

Conclusion
Together with the Lives of the Virgin by Epiphanios of Kallistratos,
Ps.-Maximos, and Symeon Metaphrastes, the Life of the Virgin by John
Geometres is an important volume in the middle Byzantine library of
Marian hagiography. Written by an outstanding poet, and reflecting
the hagiographical interests and doctrinal concerns of the post-
Iconoclastic period, the Life is a masterpiece of Byzantine rhetoric,
devotion, and theology. Although it is based on the Life by Epiphanios,
and closely mirrors the Life by Ps.-Maximos, van Esbroeck’s opinion
that the work is merely a variant of Ps.-Maximos is incorrect, as the
comparison of their respective treatments of the Virgin’s Entry into
the Temple makes clear. The importance of the Life, recognised more
than half a century ago by Antoine Wenger, will be fully appreciated
only when a critical edition of the text, along with a translation, will be
made available to interested readers.

Postscript: As this book was going to press, research conducted by

my collaborator, Christos Simelidis, revealed that the Life of the Virgin
by John Geometres was almost certainly the source text adapted and
translated into Georgian by Euthymios the Translator, who ascribed
the work to Maximos the Confessor. These arguments will be presented
in detail in our forthcoming edition and translation of Geometres’ Life
of the Virgin (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library).

60 John Geometres, Life of the Virgin (Vat. gr. 504, fol. 175v).