The Assumption of Our Lady

Today is the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady.

Looking online for suitable images I was entranced by the vitality of the standard Catholic- or Counter-Reformation depictions by artists, with their swirling draperies, hovering angels, cascading flowers and scattering clouds. So much so that I was spoiled for choice and decided to hunt out an image from the period of history that I especially concentrate on in the later medieval era.

The Assumption of Our Lady in York Minster 

Image: Flickr

Though more restrained than the work of Baroque and Rococo artists all the iconographic elements are there in this central boss of the vault of the entrance through the Choir Screen in York Minster.

In recent years there has been some discussion as to the date of the screen with its great array of English kings. Without going too far into a lengthy - if very interesting - digression on fifteenth century art and political symbolism this marvellous screen May have been first conceived some fifty or so years earlier but appears to have been started in 1473, and to have been substantially completed before 1479. It appears to have been very much the project of the Dean of the Minster, Richard Andrew, who held the office from 1452 until his death in 1477. Before becoming Dean he had served as the first Warden of All Souls in Oxford and as secretary to King Henry VI.

This is very much the standard late medieval way of depicting ithe Assumption. It was in this period that the image proliferated. together with that of the related theme of the Coronation of the Virgin, of which the earliest known surviving example is from the cloister of Reading Abbey from the years after 1121.

The increasing depiction of the Assumption in these centuries does not, of course, mean that this was a new aspect of Marian devotion. Its origin lies in the second century with the Protoevangelium of St James. Today’s Mattins lections in the traditional Breviary include two readings from St John Damescene ( 675/6-749 ) “the Doctor of the Assumption”. They are as follows:

Second sermon in the Falling-asleep of Blessed Mary

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This day the holy and animated Ark of the living God, which had held within it its own Maker, is borne to rest in that Temple of the Lord, which is not made with hands. David, whence it sprang, leapeth before it, and in company with him the Angels dance, the Archangels sing aloud, the Virtues ascribe glory, the Princedoms shout for joy, the Powers make merry, the Lordships rejoice, the Thrones keep holiday, the Cherubim utter praise, and the Seraphim proclaim its glory. This day the Eden of the new Adam receiveth the living garden of delight, wherein the condemnation was annulled, wherein the Tree of Life was planted, wherein our nakedness was covered.

This day the stainless maiden, who had been defiled by no earthly lust, but ennobled by heavenly desires, returned not to dust, but, being herself a living heaven, took her place among the heavenly mansions. From her true life had flowed for all men, and how should she taste of death? But she yielded obedience to the law established by Him to Whom she had given birth, and, as the daughter of the old Adam, underwent the old sentence, which even her Son, Who is the very Life Itself, had not refused; but, as the Mother of the living God, she was worthily taken by Him unto Himself.

With acknowledgments to Divinum Officium 

 

May Our Lady assumed into Heaven Pray for us